


The Pegasus Connection

by Nomad (nomadicwriter)



Category: Stargate: Atlantis, Stargate: SG-1
Genre: AU, Action/Adventure, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-13
Updated: 2007-05-12
Packaged: 2017-10-06 06:07:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 98,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomadicwriter/pseuds/Nomad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 8 AU. Conspiracy surrounds Jack's clone, Baal is on the trail of Ancient technology, and all roads seem to lead to Atlantis. SGA crossover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Spoilers**: This is a crossover that goes AU somewhere in the middle of season eight SG-1 and season one Atlantis. Expect spoilers for multiple episodes, in particular _The Fifth Race_, _Abyss_, _Fragile Balance_, _The Lost City_ and _New Order_ (SG-1) and _Hide and Seek_ (Atlantis).  
**Disclaimer**: The Stargate franchise belongs to many people, none of whom are me. Characters, settings and concepts borrowed for fun, not profit.

* * *

**I**

Daniel eventually tracked Sam down to the control room.

Well, okay, so he'd taken a glance into her lab, checked his watch to make sure it wasn't her lunch break, and then walked straight down here, but still, it was a process. "Hey, Sam," he said, wandering over to stand by her.

"Hi, Daniel." Sam didn't look up from her computer screen. It showed one of those slightly scary frequency graphs that always made him wonder exactly what the Stargate was emitting and why they weren't more worried about it, so he didn't try to study it too closely. "What's up?"

"Oh, nothing. Nothing." He casually slipped his hands into his pockets.

Sam half turned and smiled up at him. "SG-6 already left two hours ago," she said knowingly.

Daniel let the innocent look drop. "What?" he pouted. "I thought they were scheduled for 1600?"

"They were. The General moved the mission up."

"That's... gah!" Daniel laced his hands behind his head, then spread them in frustration. "He does this just to annoy me, you know."

Sam smiled and shook her head. "Daniel, you know we can't afford to spare you for a six week dig."

"But this is a serious find!" he implored her. "It's, it's- even from the MALP view, it's obvious that the language on those pillars has evolved differently from Ancient as we've seen it elsewhere. It could be evidence of the presence of Ancients in our galaxy long after the point where we thought they'd all left or Ascended. Or, or even a lost colony of humans who adopted the language of the Ancients as their own. This could be huge!"

"SG-6 will be reporting in regularly," she reminded him. "You'll be the first to get copies of their findings."

Even Sam didn't understand. She knew all about the thrill of discovery, but to her it was about numbers, equations. Photos, schematics and a disk full of measurements were as good as the real thing. Her type of science was about breaking the world down into logical blocks; his was about communication. He needed to touch the inscriptions with his own hands, breathe the same air that their creator had breathed. How could you understand a people's language unless you felt what it was to _be_ that people?

"There'll be other missions, Daniel." Sam sympathised with his disappointment even if she couldn't fully appreciate it.

"Will there?" he wondered, only semi-rhetorically. "There's no way Jack would tie up you and Teal'c on a long-term archaeological mission with me, and he denies all my requests to take a temporary transfer to another team."

"You have to admit, you don't have the best history working with other teams," Sam teased.

"I don't have the best history working with _anybody_. None of us do." He didn't know how he'd got this reputation as the trouble-magnet of the SGC. Hell, even the diplomatic team managed to get in trouble three missions out of ten. It was a dangerous galaxy out there. They knew that. They accepted that. And Jack O'Neill really had to stop playing the mother hen card.

Huh. Yeah. And why not wish for the Goa'uld to give up on galactic domination and take up knitting, while he was at it.

"Jack can't keep me on the leash forever," he said, without much optimism.

With a groan, the Stargate suddenly came to life.

"Unscheduled off-world activation!"

They crowded around Walter at his computer station. "It's SG-14's IDC," he reported, looking up at Sam as the most senior officer in the room. Jack had to be further away than his office, or he'd have sprinted down to the control room by now.

"SG-14?" Sam glanced at Daniel to see if he knew where the team had been deployed.

"PX1-522," he remembered. Doctor Doyle had requested time to investigate a power source the UAV had picked up that might have been Ancient technology.

Oh, _damn_.

"Open the iris," Sam ordered, and Walter palmed the scanner. He always looked decidedly grateful when that order was finally given; Daniel had been working for the military for a long time, but he didn't think he'd ever get used to a mentality that made you wait to take a life-saving action you knew was correct until your superior told you to.

The iris screwed open to reveal the pulsating blue of the wormhole. A moment later, a bloody and ragged Major Schrody burst onto the ramp at a run.

Jack had, on one team night out when he'd either been more drunk than usual or thought _Daniel_ was more drunk than usual, likened leading a team through the gate to being a mother of three. The analogy had involved numerous digressions into areas such as checking the contents of backpacks, enforcing bedtimes, and why you shouldn't take a Jaffa warrior through the desserts aisle of the supermarket, but the gist of the theory was this: you counted. All the time, every moment, without even thinking about it. Standing in the gateroom: one, two, three. Making camp on an alien planet: one, two, three. Running from big, ugly crazed natives: one, two, three. Out for a drink at O'Malley's: one, two three.

Daniel had giggled like a, well, a drunken archaeologist, but the next time he'd been in the gateroom for an unscheduled activation, it hadn't been the image of Jack O'Neill in a floral print dress that stuck with him as his stomach clenched.

Major Schrody's team followed him through the gate. One, two...

Gaping, horrible, emptiness.

"Medical team to the gate room." Walter sent out the call as the wormhole popped closed behind the travellers.

Sam leaned forward to speak into the microphone. "Major, what happened to your team?"

Schrody was swaying on his feet, barely able to stay upright. "Jaffa. Dozens of them. They must have been there before we arrived. They ambushed us outside the village and took Doctor Doyle captive. Where's the General? We need to mount a rescue mission."

Daniel knew Jack would desperately want to launch one - but with that many Jaffa, the odds were low that any kind of retrieval would be possible. And Major Schrody was clearly in no shape to take part in the mission himself.

It was worrying news. Large scale troop movements and the taking of captives? That was harking back to the days when the competing System Lords had been the major players in the galaxy. With Earth's success at taking out several of their number and the free Jaffa movement eating away at their forces from the inside, there were few Goa'uld left with the resources to make such a bold move. He leaned in to take Sam's place at the microphone.

"Did you manage to see the symbols on their foreheads?" he asked. Trying to stuff relevant mythological details into the heads of military grunts who attended his lectures was a neverending exercise in frustration, but if there was one thing he made sure that they _all_ knew, it was how to recognise the various tattoos. "Could you make an identification?"

"Didn't need to, sir," said Schrody. "He was with them." His face turned even grimmer. "It was Baal."

Oh, this was not good at all.

* * *

"You are absolutely, totally, certifiably insane." Jamie hoisted his school bag further up on his back, and shook his head in disbelief. "How is this a debate? There is no debate. Nobody in their right mind ranks _Family Guy_ over _The Simpsons_."

His old friend Maria remained stubbornly unmoved. "_The Simpsons_ is tired. It was tired, like, a decade ago. _Futurama_, yeah, _Futurama_ against _Family Guy_ is close, but _Family Guy_ still has the edge."

"_Family Guy_ is so not funny. Stewie is the only good thing about that show. And _Futurama_'s awesome, I'm not saying it's not, but it still can't match the glory of _The Simpsons_. There's only one Homer J. Back me up here, Jon." Jamie became aware that the third member of their trio was being suspiciously quiet on a subject close to his heart. "Jon?"

"Huh?" Jon blinked a few times, and showed every sign of having been somewhere several gazillion miles away. It was an impression he projected quite a lot of the time, especially in math class, but usually he proved suspiciously quick to tune back in once the topic drifted into more interesting waters. Right now he just seemed out of it.

Jamie supposed he knew Jon O'Neill as well as anyone - which really wasn't very. Jon had arrived at Mountain Springs in the middle of last year, and somehow completely failed to slot into the standard high school hierarchy. No clique had managed to absorb him, he hadn't faded away into the woodwork, and he hadn't even ended up ostracized as the weird new kid. High school just didn't seem to know quite what to do with him.

Jon _was_ weird, but not in a nerdy way, just in a... weird way. He was actually kind of a jock, into all the sports and pushing himself to the limits to put more muscle on his rangy frame. He was an odd mix of graceful and clumsy, like a half-grown puppy that was still getting used to the size of its feet.

'An odd mix' kind of captured Jon all round, really. He was a goofball, yet strangely dignified. A total flirt, yet he ran like hell if a girl ever made a serious move on him. He was clearly the non-academic kind of smart, but he put a huge amount of effort into his studies. And just when he had you convinced that he physically could _not_ shut his mouth or sit still for five seconds, something would make him go so dead cold serious that he scared the crap out of you. Jamie had never met anyone like him.

He was fascinating, he worshipped _The Simpsons_, and he was the kind of guy who could happily spend six hours debating the merits of various different pizza toppings. The base ingredients of a beautiful friendship, as far as Jamie was concerned.

So, yeah, he was about as close to Jon as anyone was. And he didn't think he was imagining the fact that Jon had been acting even more erratically than usual for some days now.

"What's with you?" he wondered, as they reached the main doors of the school. "You've been out of it all week."

Instead of recouping quickly for a stubborn denial or a snappy remark, Jon just wearily scrubbed a hand over his face. "Nah, it's nothing. I'm just... tired, I guess. I'll see you guys Tuesday."

He walked off without waiting for any response. Jamie watched him wander away, then turned to Maria. "What's with him?" he asked again.

She gave him an unimpressed shrug. "Nothing. He's always that weird. The better question is, what's with you? Homer Simpson beats Stewie? In what warped and twisted parallel universe? That show is just a parody of itself now. It's like the same four jokes repeated over and over. Oh, wow! Homer's fat and he likes donuts..."

They continued the old argument three-quarters of the way home, Jamie reciting his part from memory without even paying attention. Jon's unusual behaviour was still very much preying on his mind. He knew Jon was an emancipated minor - or at least, had some odd deal he'd never really elaborated on that meant he got to live by himself. If there really was something going on, who was going to know? Jamie was willing to bet he was a close-mouthed with his neighbours as he was his school friends about anything that was going on with him personally.

Maybe it really was nothing. Maybe Jon was just tired, or under the weather, or, hell, cranky for some reason he didn't feel like explaining.

Still, Jamie thought he might just pick up a DVD or some X-Box games or something and drop by Jon's place that night, just in case.

* * *

No matter how long they spent in the city of Atlantis, there was always more to explore. Occasionally, usually when working in the early hours of the morning, Radek entertained the idea that the city was deliberately opening up new areas for them, like a pet dog hopefully leaving gifts on its new master's doorstep.

He kept such flights of fancy to himself. His fellow scientists would not appreciate them; they mostly lacked a sense of poetry, capable of seeing beauty in the finest details but not in the larger picture. And Elizabeth - well, Elizabeth would just smile that little smile, the one that said that perhaps she agreed with you, or perhaps she just found you amusing, or perhaps she had a number of large men with tranquiliser guns creeping up while she nodded and smiled to humour you.

He found Elizabeth, at times, a little intimidating.

The expedition's military men were like all military men he had known; on average brighter, perhaps, but still the same in their attitudes and reactions. They saw the beauty in neither detail nor the overall majesty, focused pragmatically on the here and now. A necessary trait, no doubt, but a rather sad one, he thought.

Major Sheppard was quite different. He had a sense of whimsy, and with that and the gift of genetics that allowed him to communicate with the city of the Ancients, Radek suspected he might find there a receptive ear for his less than scientific musings.

Today, however, he was not accompanied by the Major, but by Lieutenant Ford.

"Doctor Zelenka?" Ford spoke through the radio, although he was still within easy shouting distance. "This hallway looks like more of the same. Do you want me to continue to the end?"

"No," Radek decided. "No, it is unnecessary. The design of the outer branches appears to be symmetric; I believe anything of interest we may find will lie along this central route."

"I'll backtrack to the crossroads and rejoin you. Ford out."

Radek continued picking his way along, flashlight in hand although the area remained well lit. He knew all too well that Atlantis could spring unpleasant surprises on the unwary. He might daydream that the city was friendly, but that did not mean it was harmless. Far from it.

He rounded the next pillar, and at last found a deviation in the pattern: the wall to his left was taken up by a stained glass window in shades of blue crystal. He studied it for a moment, looking for the function within the form. The Ancients had an appreciation for beauty, but in fact that made them _less_ likely to decorate their walls with works of art. They made their ordinary things their artwork, marrying aesthetics with purpose. It was a balance that sang to the engineer's soul in him.

There: set into the pattern, not concealed but simply a part of it, he recognised the panel that would open the door. It did not respond immediately to his touch, but that did not trouble him; he had worked on more than enough similar devices to anticipate the most likely causes of the problem. A simple diagnosing session later, and he had the crystal doors swinging open.

What he saw inside stole his breath away, and when it returned he muttered his amazement aloud in his native tongue. But after a moment he remembered himself, and quickly touched his radio. "Doctor Beckett?"

There was a brief pause, then the response, calm but mildly concerned. "Aye, Beckett here."

"This is Doctor Zelenka. I am exploring with Lieutenant Ford in the south part of the newly discovered wing."

"Is there a medical emergency?"

He shook his head, although Beckett could not see him. "No. But I believe we have found something that you would want to see."

"I'll be there in a couple of minutes," the doctor promised, and signed off.

Radek clicked off the radio, and waited for Ford's hurrying footsteps to catch up. Just before the Lieutenant arrived, he reached out to pat the wall, and murmured softly, "Good girl."

Just in case.

* * *

Jon's apartment block was not in the best of areas, but nowhere near the worst of them. It was just nondescript, the kind of place you'd expect to find first-time buyers and young families; people who weren't destitute but didn't have a lot of cash to flash around. The kind of place where people didn't pay all that much attention to their neighbours.

Even here, though, a sixteen-year-old living alone was more than a little unusual.

Jamie got into the building without any difficulty, which was both convenient and troubling. The word 'vulnerable' wasn't anywhere in the top five hundred terms to describe Jon O'Neill, but all the same, Jon was all alone out here. Urged on by an irrational anxiety, Jamie took the stairs two at a time.

He'd been here quite a few times before; Jon might not be particularly open about himself, but he was far from stand-offish, and he had no problems throwing open his conveniently parent-free apartment for anybody who wanted to catch the game or whatever. He had a pretty hard-line policy against letting anyone use it for more dubious behaviour, but Jamie supposed a slightly more grown-up sense of responsibility came with the territory. The straightest answer he'd ever got out of Jon was a vague comment about the Air Force paying for everything; he gathered that Jon's whole family had been military, and most if not all of them were dead.

The door was standing ajar when he reached it. Jamie slowed down, and approached with a caution that he told himself was stupid. So the door wasn't locked: maybe Jon had just left it that way. _He_ wasn't pathetically insecure, after all. Unlike some people here who could be mentioned.

All the same, Jamie didn't call out as he pushed open the door.

The lights were on, but there was no obvious sound or motion. The TV was off, but he stepped through to check out that room anyway. His eyes fell on the coffee table... and on something decidedly strange that rested there on top of the open TV Guide.

It was about the size of a football, although not quite that shape, and appeared to be bluish-black stone. It made him think of African sculpture - something about the smooth lines - although the writing, if it was writing, was distinctly weird. All the characters made up of square blocks, like the pixellated script of a low res computer game.

Jamie ran a curious hand over it, and flinched back in surprise at the heat of the thing. He'd expected it to be as cool as its surroundings, or even a deeper icy cold, but it was like touching a piece of machinery that had warmed up from constant use. He even imagined he felt a slight vibration from it, but maybe-

"What's up?"

Jamie jumped in a way that would have been humiliating, if he hadn't been too busy being scared out of his mind. He looked up to see Jon in the kitchen doorway, casually holding a bottle of beer close to his mouth.

"Um... hi," he mumbled awkwardly. "Uh, your door was open..."

"Yeah?" Jon spared a glance that way. "Okay." He took a sip of the beer.

Jamie relaxed a little. "Sorry to just barge in. I was gonna call, but..." He endeavoured to indicate with a shrug that there was a long and dull story involved. Jon didn't seem mad at the intrusion, at least. Jamie nodded at the stone football on the table. "What's with the modern art?"

Jon didn't even bother to follow his gaze. "Oh, it's just... something I picked up somewhere."

Jamie's heart-rate had finally slipped down into something within shouting distance of normal, and he eyed the beer covetously. "Any chance I could get one of those?"

"Yeah, when you're twenty-one." Jon had the grace to look a little embarrassed at Jamie's sharply raised eyebrows. "Uh - they're a present from my... cousin. He let me have a couple, but he'll be pissed if I share them with anyone. Sorry."

"Okay," Jamie conceded lightly, not exactly married to the idea of the beer, just further unnerved by the weirdness of the response. There was something slightly off here, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

Then Jon seemed to shake himself out of whatever it was, and animation returned to his face. "So. You eat already, or you want to share my pizza?"

They spent most of the evening playing X-Box games and arguing about hockey, and everything seemed normal. Still, the feeling of disquiet never quite faded away, and it was still there as a faint little buzz in his stomach when Jamie headed out and jogged down the stairs.

As he knelt down to unchain his moped from the railings where he'd left it, he was a peripherally aware of a dark van pulling up. Several almost unnaturally ordinary-looking guys in suits got out and disappeared into Jon's apartment building.

Jamie had a disturbing feeling he knew exactly where they were going. But it might be only paranoia, and it wasn't really his business anyway. With one last troubled glance up at Jon's window, he started his bike and headed home.

* * *

Carson took a deep breath before making the pronouncement. "Rodney - you're fine."

As predicted, his most troublesome patient took that news with considerably less relief and appreciation than most. "Fine? That thing exploded right in my face! I could have serious lung damage. Didn't you hear me wheezing when we came through the gate?"

"According to Major Sheppard, you were running for a good five minutes before you made it to the Stargate," Carson pointed out gently. The best approach to take with Rodney McKay, he had soon discovered, was a mix of firm but fair parenting, gentle mockery, and being bloody irritated.

All right, maybe it wasn't the _best_ approach, but it was the one that kept him sane.

Rodney shot him the darkest of dark looks. "Oh, yes. That's very nice. Mock the dying. No doubt you'll be responsible for the wording on whatever inadequate excuse for a grave marker this galaxy can provide: Here lies Doctor Rodney McKay, killed by incompetent health care professionals - he wheezed when he ran. Yes, I can see I'll get a fair and unbiased assessment here."

Carson felt no particular need to disguise his eye-roll as he straightened up. "Rodney, no one else on the team has had any bad reaction to the plants-"

"Nobody else had one explode two inches from their face! Need I remind you there are a number of fairly important sensory organs in that region? Considering you allegedly attended medical school, one could probably be forgiven for thinking I wouldn't have to, but-"

"If you'd had a serious allergic reaction, it would have manifested itself a lot earlier than this," Carson continued implacably. "It's possible you may have inhaled some pollen or spores that temporarily affected your breathing, but there's no reason for the trouble to persist in a sterile environment like Atlantis. You'll be fine. Now, could I possibly borrow your life signs detector for a moment?"

"What? Why?" Rodney clutched at his chest. "You think something's _alive_ in there?"

He gave that the look it deserved. "Doctor Zelenka and Lieutenant Ford are exploring somewhere in the wing Sergeant Bates's team just opened up. I'd like to get a precise pin-point on their location so I can find out what it is Doctor Zelenka called me down there to see."

Rodney straightened up, life-threatening medical condition abruptly forgotten. "Zelenka called _you_?" he demanded. "Why would he do that? Does he need you to use your gene? If he's found a piece of technology that requires the ATA gene to activate, I should have been his first point of contact."

Heheaved a long-suffering sigh. "I have absolutely no idea what he called me for. If you want to tag along, you can ask him when we get there. Now come on."

Carson had moved into medical research early on in his career, and had found to his vague surprise, when necessity had forced him into being Atlantis's answer to a general practitioner cum surgeon cum everything else, that he actually enjoyed being face to face with his patients again.

It was just that sometimes, after going a few rounds with Rodney McKay's inner - and outer - hypochondriac, he had trouble remembering why.


	2. Chapter 2

**II**

Walter appeared in the doorway with that special little combination of officious and uncertain only he could do. "General? You asked me to remind you that you wanted to speak to Colonel Reynolds before-"

"Ah- yeah, I got it. Thanks, Walter." Jack gratefully abandoned his half-hearted attempt at doing paperwork, and swung himself out of his chair.

Technically, as the General, he could pretty much sit in his office and have everybody come to him. That was largely what General Hammond had done, after all, and Jack certainly wouldn't have dreamed of raising any complaint against him. But he liked to get out and walk among his people whenever it was humanly possible. His knees might thank him for the switch to a job with a higher than previous degree of desk in it, but the rest of him remembered action.

When you had a target, you moved toward it. When you had a safe position, you patrolled it. Sitting still was for when you had the enemy in your sights, or when the enemy had _you_. If he was in a position where he wasn't allowed to fidget, it kicked off that old impulse to get out there and kill or be killed.

Hmm. Maybe he should raise that defence next time somebody not-so-politely pointed out his habit of going off the rails in boring meetings with the big-wigs.

He tried not to flinch as he strode through the hallways. He couldn't quite get used to the way everybody straightened up at the first hint of his presence. Not that he hadn't gotten that as a Colonel, but that had been a different kind of respect - an _earned_ respect. Not that this one wasn't, but it felt considerably more impersonal; they reacted to the stars on his shoulders first, and Jack O'Neill second if at all.

He kind of missed being plain old Jack O'Neill.

"Sir." Reynolds stood to acknowledge him, having been caught in his office doing paperwork - something that wouldn't have happened with Jack when he was a Colonel.

Reynolds was a decent guy - no Kawalsky, and certainly no Samantha Carter, but still the kind of guy you were always happy to have watching your back. Jack wondered if General Hammond had felt the same way about him, and really did hope so. Although he had a feeling he'd been a lot more annoying than Reynolds had ever dreamed of.

"SG-3 and 8 find anything?" He knew before the sombre head-shake that the answer was no. If there was one thing every member of the SGC knew they were _always_ supposed to disturb the General for, it was news of a missing man.

"Major Schrody wants to take his team back to the planet and do another sweep as soon as he gets out of the infirmary."

Jack nodded slowly. The odds of another search finding anything were beyond minuscule - PX1-522 was devoid of native life, and a featureless dustbowl to boot. If the missing man or his captors had lingered, they'd have been found already. But Doyle had been on Schrody's team.

"I don't like this," he admitted to Reynolds. "This is the fourth time Baal's Jaffa have run into our people on a planet connected to the Ancients."

"They're looking for something," Reynold said.

Jack nodded slowly. "And whatever it is, they think one of our scientists can help them find it." While Baal enjoyed a spot of torture as much as the next psychopathic glowy eyed snaky thing, it wasn't like him to actually bother with extracting information from random SGC grunts. Hell, Baal hadn't even been interested in Jack originally, until the Tok'ra had left him behind to take the punishment for crimes he hadn't even _known_ about. And then, of course, Jack had pissed him off.

So Jack, yeah, Baal would love to get his slimy little mitts on. And by association, the members of SG-1 would probably make pretty good second place prizes. But some poor kid whose closest contact with the General was occasionally sitting near him in the cafeteria? No. The Goa'uld thought they were gods; they didn't have the world's best grasp on the 'all men are created equal' mentality.

Which was probably just as well. If any of the snakes ever cottoned onto the fact that human beings would actually _care_ about the wellbeing of people they'd never met before in their lives, things might just hit the fan in a big way. The only thing stopping the Goa'uld projecting twenty-four hour torture-o-vision through the Stargate until Earth sent its ringleaders out was the fact they assumed everyone else in the universe thought the way they did.

No, if Baal had taken Doyle, he'd taken him for information, not as a bargaining chip. And Goa'uld plus Ancient tech plus interrogated scientists added up to the kind of mixture that you really wouldn't want to put your foot in.

Baal had found something. Or at least had an idea of where it could be found. And since Nirrti had been toasted and Anubis dispatched, he was numero uno on Jack's list of Goa'ulds not to let play with the cool toys. Baal, disturbingly, had a bit more of a head for the technobabble than most of his wriggly little brethren, and the odds were that if he dug up something juicy, he'd be able to figure out how to use it.

Jack came to a decision. "Have Walter put together a list of all the planets where we've found Ancient ruins or technology. Strike the ones that Baal's hit already, and see if we can draw up some sort of patrolling schedule for others. We don't have enough men to defend everywhere, but we can at least mobilise a quick response if it looks like the snakeheads have found what they're looking for."

"Yes, sir," said Reynolds determinedly.

The Pentagon would scream about all the extra gate activity, but, hell, the Pentagon screamed when the base overstepped its monthly jello ration. Jack turned to go, then paused in the doorway. "Oh, and- Major Schrody? Let him have his sweep."

He didn't care what the budget committee had to say about the cost of unnecessary gate activations. Some things you just had to do.

* * *

"It's an Ancient medical lab." Doctor Zelenka beamed and bounced excitedly in the doorway; Doctor McKay had already pushed past him into the room and was poking around taking readings.

Ford had already exhausted most of the possibilities of the room, which, to be honest, wasn't all that interesting. It was vaguely hexagonal, with worktops of something like translucent marble running round the walls at about the right height to sit or lie on. There were a couple of handheld... gadgets... that could have been anything from arcane torture devices to cooking utensils, and a big machine in the middle. At least, he assumed it was a machine. It was a pillar about four feet high with a control panel of some sort, and an arrangement of six round blue crystals set into the top. Two of the crystals seemed to glow with an inner light like a ZPM, but the other four were dark, and one of them was obviously cracked.

"I believe this is some form of medical scanner," Zelenka was telling Beckett, indicating the pillar device. "This room is shielded - this is why no energy readings showed up in our original survey of the area."

"You think it's the Ancient equivalent of an MRI room?" Beckett said.

"Or similar." Zelenka nodded. "I am not sure about these other devices, but they appear to be diagnostic in purpose."

"It's rather far away from the main living quarters," McKay mused. "Wouldn't it make sense to have the medical facilities where most of your population is centred?"

"Perhaps there are others, scattered throughout the city," Zelenka said enthusiastically. "The shielding would make them effectively invisible to our sensors."

"Or perhaps this isn't a medical scanner at all," McKay said, always the voice of pessimism. "This could easily be an experimental lab. The shielding could be to protect everybody from the lethally dangerous radiation." He coughed and tugged anxiously at his collar, as if already feeling its hypothetical effect.

Zelenka shook his head emphatically. "Medical scanner," he said, setting his jaw.

Beckett prodded the cracked crystal tentatively. "Well, whatever it is, I think it's broken. Can you hook it up to another kind of power source?"

"These crystals are different from anything we've seen before," McKay said, frowning, as he clipped something to the back of the pillar. "It's unusual for the Ancients to go in for any kind of redundancy - it would be child's play for the race who invented ZPMs to create a power source with the same output as the six combined. It could be a safety measure, a specially designed low-output crystal array to prevent any risk of explosion from the radiation."

"One of them's cracked," Ford felt obliged to point out.

McKay gave him a sharp look. "Yes, well, maybe somebody _dropped_ it," he said scathingly. "Anyway, I'm not about to jury-rig any kind of power system until we know what we're dealing with here."

"There is enough residual power from the two working crystals to power the control panel," Zelenka put in. "If we could call up a display-"

"Yes, yes, operating instructions, I already thought of that," McKay dismissed him impatiently. "Unfortunately, all evidence suggests that it should be working already."

"It does not appear to be working," Zelenka observed dryly.

"Yes, thank you for that. Carson, get over here and see if your gene can activate it."

"Me?" Doctor Beckett looked less than thrilled at that prospect, and hung back. Rodney rolled his eyes.

"Yes, you. As you pointed out repeatedly when you gave it to me, the artificial version of the ATA gene is not always as effective as its naturally occurring counterpart, therefore, you have a better chance of powering this thing up than I do."

"Just because I've got it doesn't mean I'm good at using it!" Beckett objected. McKay waved his hands around.

"Yes, yes, that business with the chair. Well, that was a weapon and tactical planning device - this is a medical scanner. You're a medical doctor. You should have an innate understanding of how it works."

"You said it might be a source of lethal radiation!" the doctor reminded him.

"Yes, well, even if it is, we only want you to switch on the display screen. Now go on."

Beckett reluctantly stumbled forward, with the assistance of a slight shove from McKay, and screwed up his face in concentration. Absolutely nothing happened. "Rodney, it's not-"

"Keep trying," McKay snapped. They did, for several minutes, but there was no sign of any life from the device. Finally Beckett stepped back.

"I told you, I'm not good at this," he said pathetically. "Maybe you should call Major Sheppard. He's much better at this sort of thing than I am."

The scientists exchanged looks, then Zelenka shrugged. "It cannot hurt to let him attempt it before we take anything apart," he agreed.

Ford reached for his radio. "Major Sheppard? This is Lieutenant Ford..."

* * *

All quiet on the western front. Or whatever front this was. It was hard to tell on these alien planets. Lieutenant Colonel Casey looped around and made his way back to the camp at a leisurely pace.

Hertzberg acknowledged his arrival with a nod. "Sir." His weapon was lowered, but he remained alert despite the apparently peaceful nature of the planet. Casey approved. The gung-ho Major hadn't been his first pick when he was putting together the new SG-6, but he'd proved a highly competent 2IC for all that, and now Casey couldn't imagine anybody else in the position.

Sorvino, by contrast, was completely oblivious as she worked on the translation - which was why she had the Major standing guard over her in the first place. Casey moved over to join her, only gaining her attention when he blocked out the light. "How's it going?"

She might not have noted his approach, but she didn't jump at it, either, just flashed him a distracted smile. "It's... complicated. This is an obscure dialect of Ancient-"

"As opposed to all those mainstream dialects of Ancient," Hertzberg put in. Sorvino stretched her neck and groaned.

"It's about somebody called Tacha - I think that's a name - who was working on something here. The vessel of the... shifting? It revealed good... something, but Tacha perished... or maybe sickened... and the people he left behind 'echoed him in soul'. I think that's supposed to be a figure of speech, like 'heartsick' or 'died inside'. They lost heart, and they were unable to continue his dream of... um, I'm not really sure what he wanted to do... I could really use Doctor Jackson," she confessed.

"Everybody wants Doctor Jackson," Hertzberg said. "There's a waiting list a mile long, and Carter hangs on to him nearly as tight as O'Neill did."

"This might get him," Casey observed. "This shifting vessel our friend Tacha was working on - if the guy died and his people lost interest in continuing his work, is there a chance it's still here?"

Sorvino shrugged apologetically. "No idea. I still haven't translated the bottom third of the inscription yet."

"Keep at it." He patted her on the shoulder and drifted back over to Hertzberg.

"You know if we call in the big guns we'll probably get kicked off this gig and sent somewhere else," the Major said quietly. Casey showed him a stern eyebrow.

"If there _is_ a piece of experimental technology buried somewhere here-"

"I know, I know." Hertzberg held up his hands. "But the kids are having fun. Did you see the way Brand was hopping up and down over those energy readings?"

"Where is Brand, anyway?" Casey reached for his radio. "Brand, this is Casey, report."

There was a pause, long enough for Hertzberg to adjust his stance warily, then the radio crackled to life. "Sorry, Colonel," came the breathless voice of the team's youngest member and resident science geek. "I'm over behind that set of columns on the hill. I've just found something that-"

The next thing they heard was a loud and vaguely ominous _click_. Then there was a surfeit of rustling, followed by the sound of a USAF Lieutenant completely forgetting himself. "Aw, _wow_!"

Initial worries fading, Casey allowed himself a tolerant smile. "Care to clarify that last transmission, Lieutenant?" he said into the radio.

"No, sir, I would not," Brand said brightly. "Sir, regret I have nothing of import to say except: y'all should get up here _right_ now."

They got up there.

* * *

Major Sheppard's ATA gene proved no more useful in activating the device than anybody else's. Which, really, Rodney could have predicted, had anybody bothered to actually ask him. Sheppard didn't have some mystically superior version of the gene, he was just less likely than Carson to be hampered by stage fright. Since Carson was quite possibly the most nervous man Scotland had ever produced and Sheppard was so laid back you could have used him to carpet the floor, that was an observation that anybody with half a brain ought to have been able to make.

"Major Sheppard." Teyla's voice broke into what had been a fairly quiet hour of frustrated struggling. Carson had long since wandered back to attend to his medical duties, and Ford to... do whatever it was marines did when they weren't on away teams or guarding things, but they'd hung onto Sheppard to see what he could do with the other devices. As it turned out, not much, but hey, that was why they had the Major playing with them instead of wasting Rodney's own valuable time.

"Teyla." He spared her a quick nod, but only listened to the ensuing conversation with half an ear as he focused most of his attention on the machine. Zelenka was working alongside him, understanding and responding to Rodney's actions with the kind of silent communication that made him one of the very few scientists Rodney could stand to work with.

"You missed our training session," Teyla told the Major mildly, apparently not particularly upset about this. "Lieutenant Ford told me that I would find you here."

"Yeah." Sheppard stretched like a cat and gave her one of those easy smiles that he obviously believed would excuse him anything. Irritatingly, they usually did. "The docs had me trying to activate some... stuff. Any idea what this is?" He held up one of the more mystifying of the devices, which looked a little like a miniature coathanger with antennae.

"None," she said, brightly. She gazed around the shielded room with interest, eyebrows lowering. "What is this chamber? I have seen nothing like it in the parts of Atlantis we have previously explored."

"Medical scanning booth," said Zelenka.

At the same time Rodney said, "Radiation test chamber. Very dangerous."

"I see," she said, her smile broadening. Then she paused, and approached the central machine. "These crystals... I believe I have seen their type before."

"Really?" That got Rodney's attention.

Zelenka also sat up, almost bumping his head on the access panel he'd opened. "In which part of Atlantis?" he asked eagerly.

"Not here," she said, shaking her head. "On one of the planets my people visited to trade... What are they?"

"They're networked together to provide the machine with its power supply," Rodney explained. "It's hard to tell with the limited diagnostic equipment we have available, but my guess is that the material is naturally impervious to whatever kind of radiation they use in here. There are superficial similarities to other Ancient power sources we've been able to study, but the power output is of course negligible compared to a ZPM."

"So, kind of like a ZPM-mini," said Sheppard.

Rodney gave him a look. "In every imaginable way, no."

"The device will not work without four more of these crystals?" Teyla asked.

Zelenka screwed up his face. "I believe we could get it working with... two."

"Three." Rodney corrected for his optimism. "The two that are still lit have about a ninety percent charge. The cracked one is useless, obviously, but the other three have varying levels below fifty percent. Judging by the way these six are chained there should be no problem with hooking the partially charged crystals together to take the place of one fully charged one."

"Or perhaps two," Zelenka persisted. Rodney shook his head at him despairingly.

"Then I believe I can be of assistance." Teyla smiled. "The planet I am thinking of, Iaerona, had a number of such crystals on display. The people know them to have been left by the Ancestors, but consider them to be no more than ornaments."

"Then we should be able to find something they're willing to trade for them," said Sheppard cockily, straightening up. "Pack it up, McKay. We're going on a road trip."


	3. Chapter 3

**III**

The buzzer went for the end of class, and Ted didn't bother trying to recapture his students' attention. "Don't forget, test next Friday," he called over the hubbub, then paused, tapping his pen, and staring at the homework assignment in front of him.

Should he, or shouldn't he?

Oh, hell, he had to say something.

"Jon, could you stay behind a moment?"

Jon hung back from his small group of associates, looking every inch the bored and slouching teenager. Of course, Ted didn't need to have been teaching high school science for twenty-two years to recognise that such appearances could be deceptive. However, Jon O'Neill was a trickier customer to pin down than most.

He'd transferred in from nobody was quite sure where in the middle of the school year, and at first, most of the faculty had believed they'd quickly got the measure of him. Typical loudmouth and class clown - actually funny, which was something of an unusual bonus, but still, just another one to check off on the ever predictable roster of types.

Except that Jon wasn't a type. He was a chameleon.

Put him in different situations, and he was different people. Call on him in class and he was always ready with a quip, but in less public surroundings he let the act drop a little and one hell of a work ethic shone through. And the first time he'd had to work as part of a group had been an eye-opener. As the new kid, he'd been shuffled off to join a trio of those Ted would vote most likely to turn in a torn sheet of scrap paper with two paragraphs on, but somehow O'Neill had marshalled his forces and got them working together.

The thing about Jon was that no matter what situation you dropped him in, he was always, _always_ comfortable. He had a rock solid self-confidence - and not the usual kind you found in a sixteen-year-old, the swaggering "I'll do what I want and the world can't hurt me," brand of empty bravado, but something deeper and more enduring. Ted had more than once had to fight off a disconcerting urge to defer to the kid himself. The boy was a born leader.

And then, of course, there was... this.

"Sir?"

Jon had a certain way of standing in this sort of one-on-one conference; Ted wasn't the only one to have noticed it. It was Jenny Watkins, Jon's math teacher, who'd first put a finger on it. "He's like some kind of miniature soldier," she'd said, chuckling faintly. "I keep wanting to salute and tell him to stand at ease."

The football coach, Bob Dyson, had coughed into his coffee. "Soldier? Kid thinks he's a goddamned officer. Damned if he doesn't have the airs and graces for it, too. I will _eat_ an entire week's worth of leftovers from the cafeteria if that boy's daddy was anything less than a Colonel."

And considering the state of the food that the cafeteria actually _served_, that was no vow to make without the weight of certainty behind it.

Whatever its origins, it was a stance that made you want to sit up, clear your throat, and generally act like you were a person worth paying attention to. Ted straightened up and nervously flattened out the sheet of paper before him.

"Ahem. Um. Jon, about this physics homework..."

"Did I not do it right?" Jon's brow wrinkled pensively. "I had some trouble with the gravitational forces - I've never got on so well with gravitational forces-"

"Ah, the work is fine," he said hastily. "Very good, you just need to pay more attention to the numbers. Your calculations are fine, but you're making some careless mistakes in the working. No, it's about this... these notes in the margin."

"Sir?" Jon looked honestly perplexed. But then, he could give you that look for using words of more than two syllables if he decided he felt like having a dense day. Still, Ted thought he caught an edge of genuine confusion in there somewhere. He turned the paper round and tapped it with his pen.

"These calculations here."

The scribbles in the margins were also equations, but a far cry from the relatively simple balancing of forces and velocities that took up the rest of the page. These were the kind of equations that Ted could look at with his university level education in physics, and understand just enough to know that he didn't understand a damn thing. He was pretty sure from the values of some of the constants in use he was looking at astrophysics, but beyond that... It wasn't work he recognised from standard texts, or even the more popular cutting-edge journals.

And yet here it was, scribbled down on the edge of a homework assignment in what Ted was prepared to swear blind was Jon O'Neill's handwriting, as if he'd been absently jotting down the math to make sure he had it straight in his head.

Jon stared at the paper for some time, with what appeared to be a completely blank expression. Ted only realised that it wasn't when the shutters went down behind his eyes a moment later, and he closed himself off so neatly and completely that he might as well have been a granite statue.

"That isn't anything, sir," he said lightly. "It's not real math, I, um... copied it off a computer screen in this TV show I was watching." He gave a perfectly judged little 'aw, shucks' grin of faint embarrassment. "Well, uh, you know me and science fiction."

As a performance, it could have been put up for an Emmy - and probably would have lost because no one would have believed it was actual acting. Certainly, if Ted hadn't had very good evidence of Jon's previous history of pretending to be much less bright than he was, he wouldn't have known what to think.

He still didn't, and Jon's steady, piercing gaze was impossible to hold for any length of time. Ted used clearing his throat as an excuse to look down. "Well. Looks like somebody involved in that show took the time to do their research. Thanks for clearing that up, Jon." He deliberately shuffled the paper back into a pile of other assignments to forestall any attempt to reclaim it.

"No problem, sir." Jon nodded and sauntered away. Ted watched him all the way to the door, and only suppressed the impulse to scurry over to it and peer out because he was sure Jon wasn't dumb enough to drop the act that quickly.

Ted sat and tapped his fingers for a while. Then he pulled the assignment back out of the stack, and picked up the phone. He dialled the number of his old Alma Mater, where a distant associate of his still taught astrophysics.

"Hi. Can you put me through to Doctor Visnadi? Tell him it's Ted Rasmussen from Colorado. I have something here I think he might want to take a look at..."

* * *

Four hours later, Brand and Sorvino were still geeking over their find. Of course, Brand and Sorvino could comfortably geek for weeks at a time over interesting rocks, but in this particular instance, Casey was doing little bit of internal geeking himself.

It was a ship. Or rather, part of one. They'd stumbled upon the Ancient Tacha's underground lab, where he'd been doing what every self-respecting engineer did in his leisure time: tinkering with engines.

Based on Sorvino's first skim-through of his notes, it seemed that Tacha had gone to ground on this planet to avoid the plague that was wiping out his people, and hence also missed the boat when the survivors took off for the Pegasus Galaxy. Seeking to rejoin them, he'd spent decades of his life trying to create an intergalactic hyperdrive from the primitive parts and materials available to him. By the end of his life he'd reached the point where he believed it would work, but he'd died before he'd been able to procure a ship to test it in.

"So why didn't his buddies hook it up themselves after he'd died?" Casey wondered aloud. "I mean, the thing's _finished_, right?"

"I don't think any of the others were Ancients," Sorvino explained. "I was wrong about the inscription up above - it's not a dialect we haven't encountered, it was made by people who weren't very familiar with the language. They wanted to leave a message in case the other Ancients came looking, but it's the sort of translation you'd get by looking things up in a dictionary without really understanding how the parts of language go together."

"Ancient, Babelfish style," Casey said. Sorvino smiled.

"Pretty much. Tacha's notes are much easier to read, although the content is a little cryptic - he's writing for his own reference, after all. I'm guessing that after he died, his companions just sealed up the laboratory and left the inscription - they wouldn't have had the first clue how to install the engine in a ship themselves."

Casey grunted. "What are the odds that we do?"

Lieutenant Brand straightened up from his inspection of the hyperdrive, eyes shining. "I think we could do it, sir," he said optimistically. "It looks like Tacha kept fairly comprehensive notes, and our people do have experience interfacing our own tech with Ancient devices. It wouldn't power a ship as big as the _Prometheus_, but maybe something about the size of a tel'tak..."

Casey didn't pretend he'd be able to follow any more of an in-depth discussion than that. "Okay. You guys keep at it. I'm going to rejoin Hertzberg."

His 2IC gave Casey a nod of acknowledgement as he made his way over to the Stargate to join him. Despite Hertzberg's outwardly brash and impulsive nature, the two of them were more alike than they were different, career military men comfortable in silence in a way their two excitable young scientists weren't. Spending a decade or two being shot at in a variety of unpleasant locations taught you to really appreciate those moments when everything was still, silent, and blessedly boring.

After a while, the Major shot him a sidelong look. "You gonna dial home?" he asked neutrally.

"It's still six hours 'til our next scheduled check-in," Casey said, equally noncommittal.

"They'll want to send a bigger science team," Hertzberg said.

"Yup."

"Brand'll get pissy about it."

"Brand'll have to learn to share his baby." Technically, a find this big more than justified dialling home ahead of schedule, but Casey was willing to let his scientists have a little more time to play yet. They'd earned it, and besides, the more chance they had to familiarise themselves with the site, the less chance they'd get it lifted straight out of their hands and be sent on to another planet while a different team took over. SG-6 was primarily an exploration team, and they seldom got to stick around to see their discoveries fully unearthed. Brand would be a whole lot more than pissy if he was forced to abandon this one.

Both men went onto higher alert at the sound of the first chevron engaging. They exchanged a glance, then took cover behind the nearest ridge as the dialling sequence completed and the wormhole _whooshed_ into being.

"Our guys?" Casey murmured almost silently, as Hertzberg peered over the top of the rise. His 2IC dropped back down and grimly shook his head.

Casey risked a glance of his own, and felt his heart sink. Crap. Too many Jaffa for one team to take out - and as if that wasn't bad enough, they were accompanied by their Goa'uld master.

It was Baal.

* * *

"Major." Teyla came jogging toward him with a smile. John smiled back automatically, struck again by how the humans in this galaxy could be so alien, and yet so... not. Teyla's culture was not much like any he knew from Earth, and she sometimes gave him some very funny looks, and yet some aspects of body language seemed the same all over. Just how much of the way people talked and looked and acted had been pre-programmed into their evolution by the Ancients? It was a thorny question, and one that could lead to days of dwelling on biology, theology, and the meaning of life.

Fortunately, he'd never been much of a one for the dwelling.

"Where's McKay?" he asked.

"I believe he went to see Doctor Beckett for a second examination."

John rolled his eyes dramatically. "He's not _still_ going on about that puffball thing from that jungle planet we visited?"

"It was an _alien lifeform_, Major." McKay gave him a sharp glower as he came puffing up to join them. His fitness had improved since he'd joined the field team - constantly running for your life had a way of doing that - but he was never going to be built for poetic motion. "The number of possible contagions - toxins - allergens..." He interrupted himself with a bout of suspiciously timed coughing.

Ford arrived, and eyed the spluttering McKay before raising an eyebrow in John's direction. Interesting how McKay's 'condition' had mysteriously vanished until he was back in the gate room about to embark on another mission.

"You were as healthy as a horse when you were demolishing that meatloaf a few hours ago," John pointed out. McKay's death glare resumed, although it was somewhat diminished by the accompanying watery eyes.

"Yes, well, I was greatly aided by the fact that I've lost all sense of taste and smell. What kind of animal produces meat that colour, anyway? And are we sure the biologists cleared it for human consumption? Because I'm pretty sure-"

"Major Sheppard." Elizabeth Weir emerged from her office, bringing a welcome early end to the diatribe. "Is your team ready to depart?" John gave her a nod.

"Yes, Ma'am. We're keen and ready to sample the many delights of..." He fumbled.

"Iaerona," Teyla supplied.

"Yes. Iaerona." He smiled winningly. Elizabeth gave him a look.

"Just try not to give away the planet this time," she suggested. John showed her his most innocent shrug.

They moved out, McKay continuing to cough sporadically. John listened with half an ear just in case it was actually something, but the coughs were shallow and squeaky, more like a tickle in the throat than an incipient chest infection. Most likely it was McKay's own state of panic closing up his throat.

"What are the odds the Iaeronans are going to want to trade with us?" Ford asked, as they made their way cautiously through the idyllic surroundings. The Stargate was situated in a meadow, and they were wading through knee high bluish grass. Teyla seemed untroubled by it and appeared to know where they were going, so John remained in a state of medium wariness.

He never hit the low end of that scale off-world. Too many pretty landscapes, friendly natives, and cute fluffy animals had turned out to be homicidal for him to relax until they were back on Atlantis.

Funny how quickly a partially explored ancient alien city that could have housed just about _anything_ had turned into home.

"It is difficult to say," Teyla said, shrugging philosophically. "The people of Iaerona do not covet material things, but they are dedicated to the study of history. They believe that all things are part of the Cycle, and that it is right to be hunters of lesser creatures and prey to the higher. They do not believe it is our place to destroy the Wraith, only to evade them as best we can."

"Great." John wrinkled his nose. "The Zen approach to genocide."

"How are we going to convince them to give us the crystals if they won't want our technology and they aren't interested in fighting the Wraith?" Ford wanted to know.

"We'll just have to use our charm," John said sagely.

For some reason, that perfectly reasonable suggestion earned him two snorts and one of Teyla's knowing smiles.

* * *

"Colonel Carter!"

Sam paused in the middle of the hallway, on her way to a long overdue date with a hot shower, and wondered if it was too late to cultivate a bear with a sore head reputation to rival the General's. Regrettably, it probably was. She managed a polite smile and turned back.

"Colonel Carter." Doctor Lee came hurrying up to meet her. Something of a scientific jack of all trades who could be relied upon to have read some journal article somewhere about any obscure topic you cared to name, Lee pulled his fair share of fieldwork assignments, but had never really physically adapted to fit the role. He was a little round man who always gave the impression of scurrying about even when he wasn't.

At this particular point in time, he was. As he caught up with her, he produced a dog-eared square of folded paper from one of his many pockets. "Colonel. I just received a fax from one of the astrophysicists who helped us with the black hole data."

The classified nature of the Stargate project meant that very little of their scientific data ever travelled outside the mountain, but occasionally something would come up that matched closely enough to their cover story of Deep Space Radar Telemetry that they could afford to let other leaders in the field take a look at it. Sam took the proffered sheet of paper and scanned it.

"What _is_ this?" she had to ask a moment later. It looked, at first glance, to be nothing more than a handwritten set of very basic physics exercises. But the equation casually scribbled in the margin was completely unrelated to the rest of the work - in fact, it was light years ahead of it. Sam raised her head to stare at Doctor Lee.

"We have no idea where it came from," he said, ruefully shaking his head. "Doctor Visnadi says it was forward to him by an old friend, who claims to have got it from one of his high school students. He passed it on to us because he thought it was remarkably similar to some of the theoretical work our scientists shared with him."

Sam frowned in disbelief. "This is way beyond high school. This is wormhole physics!" _Accurate_ wormhole physics. Outside of the SGC, the only work in the field was by necessity strictly theoretical. It was _possible_ for someone working independently to have made enough correct assumptions to write equations that described a genuine wormhole...

It just wasn't very likely.

"I know. And here's the thing." Doctor Lee gave her meaningful look. "Turns out this physics teacher friend of his works at Mountain Springs High School. Right here in Colorado."

Sam's stomach clenched in dismay. "We've got a leak," she realised grimly.


	4. Chapter 4

**IV**

"General?" Walter appeared in his office doorway.

"What's up, Walter?" Jack was feeling pretty good about himself. SG-1 had returned unscathed from a thoroughly uneventful mission, he'd managed to escape without Daniel telling him all about it, and his paperwork was finally almost caught up.

Well. The 'done' pile was a tiny fraction of an inch taller than the 'waiting' pile. Admittedly, that still left him a six-inch high stack to get working through, but he counted it a victory.

"SG-6 are an hour late for their scheduled check-in, sir."

Jack frowned fractionally. Normally anything up to four or five hours was little cause for alarm. Things came up. SG-6's current assignment was an uninhabited planet, but any mission where the scientists had free reign usually involved a certain amount of wandering off, losing track of time, and being too preoccupied to notice that the towering grey thunderheads across the horizon might, possibly, indicate some form of approaching weather condition. But still, Casey was usually conscientious.

He spun a pen on his desk pensively, deciding.

"Give it another hour," he told Walter finally. "If Casey hasn't called in by then, dial P2C-491 and find out why."

"Yes, sir." Walter nodded and departed.

As always, as the door swung shut, Jack was left with the chilling feeling that if there _was_ something wrong, his decision to wait might have condemned a good man and his team to their deaths.

* * *

John turned to look back at Teyla in disbelief. "I thought you said these people were _religious pacifists_?"

They'd stumbled into the middle of... well, if he hadn't been certain that the Wraith would have taken steps to stomp out anything resembling college, he would probably have called it a frat party. A large gathering of Iaeronan natives dressed in ornate if camouflage-toned costumes were currently drinking, laughing, singing, wrestling, and generally having the kind of fun that tended to end around oh-four hundred with a desperate charge for the facilities.

Teyla smiled. "I said they were dedicated to their belief in the Cycle," she corrected. "To the Iaeronans, the hunt is a sacred duty, and one marked by much celebration."

"What do they hunt?" Ford asked, scanning the terrain around them warily. They'd all learned to step carefully around Pegasus Galaxy wildlife. People who'd lived for centuries under the threat of the Wraith could sometimes have... interesting ideas about what should be counted safe enough to get close to.

"At this time of year, they hunt beasts called hraka," Teyla supplied. "They are not predators, although they are large enough to be dangerous if startled."

"Oh, great. We're gonna be stamped to death by wild hraka." McKay looked pale, and he was still sweating from the hike. John made a mental note to get his fitness reassessed sometime, figure out if he needed some more intensive training. Actually, he should probably do that for all the scientists.

Boy would they love that.

Teyla stepped out and hailed a short, stocky man who looked hale and hearty despite his ragged shock of white hair. "Aethred! Greetings."

As always, John was momentarily conflicted. Teyla was used to leading her people, and while she fitted very smoothly into a team and followed their mission objectives perfectly, she didn't always look to him for confirmation before taking action. Which... okay, on the one hand, it wasn't like she was doing things he wouldn't have asked her to _anyway_, and he didn't want to be the anal military guy demanding to be consulted before anybody breathed; on the other, the need for a clear chain of command... It was complicated.

McKay, of course, didn't get the whole orders thing at all, and would argue them in any situation that didn't involve the likelihood of instant death - which was, God help them, a step above many of the other scientists. So really, John didn't so much have a command as he had Ford and a mini-democracy that accepted his authority if no better options presented themselves. But still, he was technically in charge, and that made him feel responsible.

He stepped forward to join Teyla.

"This is Major Sheppard, Lieutenant Ford, and Doctor McKay," she was just introducing. The little man - Aethred - bowed his head slightly, and made a little circle gesture with one hand.

"May the Cycle ever spin," he said politely.

"May you never have to switch it to economy wash," John responded gravely, nodding back. This seemed to satisfy as an answer, or at least not actively offend.

Aethred clapped his hands together. "Welcome, welcome! You have chosen the most blessed of times to visit our people. The hunt is about to begin! Please, you must join the celebration."

McKay stepped forward. "Well, actually, we were hoping you could-"

"-Talk to us about a few things, but we can get down to business after the party," John interrupted him. "Teyla, you know these people - why don't you and Ford go with Mr Aethred here. We'll just... hang around and mingle."

Teyla smiled in acknowledgement, but McKay gave him a dour look as the others moved off. "Major, while I'm sure you're hoping that these people and their apparent obsession with going round in circles will have defied all probability and invented the Ferris wheel before having an industrial revolution, it's hardly an efficient use of our time to-" He broke off to cough as a group of boys bearing smouldering torches charged past, and John took advantage of the moment to break in.

"Look, McKay, I know it's a radical idea, but how 'bout we try making nice with the bicycle people before we go asking them to give up their national treasures?"

"Oh, sure." McKay even managed to cough scathingly. "Isn't that what we always do? Inevitably followed by the part where they try to kill us."

John had to admit, he had a point.

He smiled pleasantly at the cavorting natives as they wandered through the festivities, but he still kept a loose grip on his weapon, and a wary eye on the other members of their team. The Iaeronans might be every bit as friendly as they seemed... but just in case they weren't, he stayed on guard.

* * *

"Sam!" A smiling Daniel appeared in the doorway of her lab, followed by an almost-smiling Teal'c. Their Jaffa teammate had lightened up considerably in recent months - Sam and Daniel were both fairly sure it was thanks to the strides made in freeing his people, whereas General O'Neill maintained it was because he now had hair - but it was still disconcerting to see him looking, well, cheerful. Sam couldn't help but grin back, despite the weighty matters on her mind.

"Hey guys, what's up?"

"Daniel Jackson was under the impression that you were in need of sustenance," Teal'c said, in that deadpan way that hadn't fooled her for years. There was definitely a suspicion of a smirk lurking around his mouth as a mountainous array of snack foods began appearing from her teammates' various pockets.

"Yeah, Sam, you've been holed up in here ever since we got back," Daniel said, snaffling one of the candy bars from the pile for himself. "I'm pretty sure those soil samples weren't _that_ interesting."

"I thought those were for me," Sam protested archly, temporarily ignoring the fact that if her teammates actually expected her to consume everything they'd brought her she would end up the size of a house. Daniel shrugged innocently.

"Hey, I've been busy too."

"Any news of SG-6?" she asked, momentarily sobering, but she wasn't surprised when Daniel shook his head.

"We remain unable to dial in to P2C-491," said Teal'c gravely. Daniel glanced at them both.

"You think it's Baal?"

Sam sighed, leaning forward over the workbench. "It fits the MO," she admitted reluctantly. "The initial report mentioned structures of possible Ancient origin - that's why SG-6 were given the mission in the first place. And the last time Baal's Jaffa struck a site close to the gate, they kept the wormhole open while they scoped the place."

"They may not even know our people are there," Daniel suggested optimistically. "Colonel Casey would have pulled his team out of the way the moment they got an incoming wormhole, and it's pretty obvious that Baal is after something on one of the planets rather than specifically tracking our people."

"The trouble is, what?" Sam grimaced. "It's not like the Goa'uld to be in it for the pursuit of knowledge. Baal must have got wind of something he thinks he can use."

"At least we may take comfort in the fact that he does not appear to know where it is," Teal'c observed.

"Yeah." Daniel scratched his jaw. "The trouble is, he's got a lot more manpower to commit to this kind of search than the SGC's ever had."

"Both SG-11 and SG-14 reported that Baal accompanied his forces personally." Teal'c looked, to those select few who'd spent enough years with him to read the tiny hints of such expressions, rather smug. "I believe he can no longer trust that his Jaffa will remain loyal to him should they find something that would give them an advantage over the Goa'uld."

"That's probably why he's undertaking the search right now," Sam said. "His power base is eroding, and he's desperate enough to commit the last of his forces to the pursuit of something that could turn the tide."

"Let's hope it turns out to be a wild goose," said Daniel, smiling wryly. Rather than comment, Teal'c simply raised an austere eyebrow.

Daniel leaned forward, frowning down at the fax she'd been staring at until it made her eyes cross. "So anyway, what _are_ you working on?"

She swivelled it round to face him. "This was faxed to an astrophysicist who has a loose connection to the SGC. It came from a teacher at a Colorado high school. Apparently, somewhere out there is a teenager with a good enough knowledge of wormhole physics to start doodling classified information on the edge of his science homework."

Daniel studied it for several moments, pursing his lips pensively. "Want to hear something _really_ crazy?" he said, raising his eyes to meet hers. "I'm pretty sure this is Jack's handwriting."

* * *

"You think I did what?" Jack stared at his team from under lowered eyebrows.

"Not you, sir," Carter piped up helpfully. "Your clone."

Jack tapped the sheet of paper. "He wouldn't understand that equation. _I_ don't understand that equation. Hell, I don't even understand the high school homework ones!" Not strictly true, but there was no need to muddy the waters.

Daniel folded his arms. "Well, good point, but... that _is_ your handwriting."

"That... _looks_ like my handwriting," he was forced to concede, screwing his face up.

"You believe there to be subterfuge at work, O'Neill?"

He snapped his fingers and pointed at Teal'c. "Yes, right. Exactly. What he said."

"You think it's a frame-up?" Carter looked sceptical. "Who'd benefit? It's a massive coincidence that it was forwarded to somebody with SGC connections at all."

"Not that massive," Daniel countered. "It's handed in to his science teacher, he's relatively likely to recognise the field or at least show it to someone who does. If we don't keep tabs on potential genius astrophysicists, the NID sure does."

"The NID's clean now," Carter said, and Jack snorted. Yeah, right, he'd believe that when- Well, come to think of it, he'd believe that _never_.

"What would the NID - or whatever quasi-conspiracy group is pretending to be them today-" he threw in to quell Carter's predictable objection, "-want with the kid?"

"He is, to all intents and purposes, _you_, O'Neill," Teal'c said.

"Hey, I am not sixteen!" he objected.

"Indeed you are not."

"Teal'c has a point," said Daniel. "Jack, your clone is you - only younger, physically easier to subdue, and a whole lot less likely to be missed."

"The failsafe the Asgard used to prevent a clone of you from growing to full maturity was to protect your genetic code," Carter reminded him. "Yours was the first example of the ATA gene they encountered, and you're still the only human to have had the knowledge of the Ancients downloaded into your head."

"Twice!" he felt obliged to point out.

"Only once at the time you were cloned, sir," she corrected. "Although the Asgard said they removed it all, if the process did leave any traces your clone would bear them too. Not to mention all the other things you've been through during your time at the SGC." She shuddered slightly, and Jack was reminded that she herself had once come unpleasantly close to being dissected to satisfy someone else's scientific curiosity.

He had to admit, things weren't looking too great for Jack O'Neill, junior edition. And although it was way weird to contemplate a miniature version of him running about the place, he wasn't exactly thrilled at the idea of his duplicate ending up on a slab somewhere, either. And not just because the mad scientists in question might decide to look up the original to do a compare and contrast.

"Okay," he sighed. "Carter, Daniel, go check out the school. The kid's going to make whoever we send in there, so we might as well make it somebody he'll trust. Find out what the hell Jon thinks he's up to, and try to figure out if anyone else there is doing the same thing."

"Jon?" Daniel raised a curious eyebrow.

Jack rolled his eyes. "He's keeping the name O'Neill. He might not look too much like me yet, but he's gonna, and it's better that we can pass him off up front as a cousin or something than have people start thinking I've been... sowing my wild oatmeal, et cetera." He had nightmares of his ex-wife running into the kid one day, and thinking- no, he was _not_ going to go there. "Two Jack O'Neills in the system is too much potential for screw-ups, and he didn't want to change his name... seemed best to re-Christen him Jonathan so he could at least go by something I did, in the dim and distant past, actually answer to."

"The very dim and distant past," Daniel amended, smirking.

Jack glared, and then flicked his hands at them all. "Go on, shoo. And Daniel... just remember, I'm the one that gets to respond to the call if the two of you get arrested for stalking high schoolers."

Sometimes, being General had its up side.

* * *

The teenagers on Iaerona were pretty much the same as teenagers Ford had met on any planet anywhere. The game of choice here was zhiko, a complicated variant of frisbee played with multiple rings, but the antics going on in and around it were familiar enough from the basketball court that he quickly made himself at home.

"_Teo_ Ford! Here!" Garven, one of the boys on his team, jumped and waved madly at the far end of the game field. Ford wasn't entirely sure what 'teo' was supposed to mean. According to Teyla, it was a friendly honorific used for talking to adults, but from her slight flicker of a smile he had a suspicion it might well mean something like 'one who is too old to be playing zhiko like a big kid'.

Oh, well, like that was anything new.

He tossed the ring to Garven, who almost fumbled it, and ended up falling on his back with it clutched to his chest. Somebody blew the horn that signified a point had been scored - Ford still wasn't sure how they were awarded, and was leaning toward the idea that the ref just gave them to anyone who did something he liked the look of - and then it blew again, twice over. Apparently, the game was over.

"Did we win?" he asked Besla, a tall skinny girl who looked about fourteen. She giggled at his silly question.

"_Suka's team_ wins. Garven caught the blue ring for the fourth time, which means that it's out of play now, but Suka's team had already won the red and green rings, and together they're worth more."

"O-kay," said Ford, pretending that he got it. He joined the players for their post-match refreshments, which were a vaguely orangey fruit juice he'd have to warn McKay to avoid, and little flat seed cakes that were surprisingly non-horrible.

"Are your people here to join the hunt, _Teo_ Ford?" Garven asked him, stealing three seed cakes at once.

The Iaeronans seemed like nice folks, although they'd been misled by that before. Still, Ford went with his instincts. "Uh, no, we actually came by to look at some crystals Teyla told us about. They were left by the Ancients- the Ancestors..."

"The people of the First Cycle," Garven supplied, beaming. "Yes, we have some of their things on display at the Hall of History. It is important to look at what went before."

Hall of History? That sounded sort of promising, and sort of not. "The things are just there to look at? No one uses them for anything?"

"Uses...?" Garven looked puzzled.

Besla was also frowning at him. "We cannot use the tools of older peoples," she said, in about the tone of voice you'd use to tell a small child that people couldn't fly. "That would be going against the Cycle."

Ford gave her a slightly sick smile. "Yeah. No going backwards. Of course. I get it."

He guessed they wouldn't be giving the full disclosure on what they wanted the crystals for, then.

* * *

Reynolds was shaking his head even as he descended from the ramp.

"Sorry, sir," he said as he came level with Jack. "The planet's deserted. No sign of SG-6; there's evidence of a fairly large party of Jaffa having passed through, but we can't say for certain that they're Baal's."

Jack pulled an unhappy face. "Who else has the manpower? ...Jaffa-power," he corrected himself lamely. Most of the old usual suspects had been sent off to the big old snake pit in the sky; Anubis was neutralised, Yu was by all accounts kinda losing it, and most of the remaining Goa'uld were nobodies like Camel-whatsit. No, it had to be Baal.

"They set off some kind of explosive in the ruins," Reynolds continued. "Doesn't look like it was one of ours, and Casey's scientists would have chewed their own feet off before they willing damaged structures left by the Ancients anyway."

"No sign that anyone was killed in the blast?" It was his unpleasant duty to ask. Reynolds shook his head.

"We found three dead Jaffa, all taken out by automatic weapons fire, and signs that somebody else was wounded." Jack grimaced. In situations like this, it would have been better to hear that their guys _hadn't_ taken out any of the enemy, because at least that could mean they'd remained undetected.

"It's possible they rerouted to another planet if they were under heavy fire," Reynolds suggested, trying for optimism. Jack didn't respond.

They both knew that if SG-6 hadn't made it home under their own power by now, chances were they weren't ever going to.


	5. Chapter 5

** V **

Jon hadn't shown up to school.

Jamie knew there was no logical reason to be so unnerved by it. But Jon hadn't missed a single day of school so far as he could remember; had even come in one time quite obviously sick, sneezing like a maniac and glowering at everybody.

So what did that prove? Maybe he'd had learned his lesson from that time, or was feeling even worse. He could have come down with 'flu or something, which would explain why he'd been so subdued.

Wouldn't explain the men in the black van, though.

Who Jamie had no proof at all had even visited Jon's apartment.

He barely paid attention as Mr Rasmussen droned on about the equations he was scribbling, consumed by irrational worries. What if Jon _was_ sick - too sick to even call for help if he needed it? No one would know. What if those men had come back and... done something to him?

A knock on the classroom door succeeded on catching his attention, and everyone else's. His heart lurched to a halt when an unfamiliar couple walked in: a tall, attractive blonde woman and a guy in glasses who was dressed like a geek but not built like one. They most certainly didn't work at the school, and for a second all he could think was that they were here to tell the class that Jon had died.

"Theodore Rasmussen?" the woman asked the teacher politely, and Jamie's heart restarted, but at a painful rate. Mr Rasmussen had pulled Jon aside at the end of their last lesson for a talk about something. This could still be about him. Who were these guys, anyway? CIA? Air Force? Related to the men in the van?

He wasn't the only one to watch with eagle eyes as the pair led Mr Rasmussen out into the hallway and, apparently, off to somewhere even more private. However, most of the chatter that immediately sprung up was speculation on how long they could hope for Mr R. to be gone, or the identity of the two good-looking strangers.

Jamie had a whole different reason to be concerned.

Over the past year, he'd built up a private theory about Jon that he'd never shared with anybody. That curiously adult outlook, the fact he seemed to have no living relatives or even temporary guardians, his unexplained connection to the Air Force... Jamie had the feeling that Jon might just be in some program not a million miles away from witness protection. He'd seen something he shouldn't, maybe even the same something that had killed his parents, and the Air Force had hidden him away at a Colorado high school to protect him from... people.

The kind of people who might well case a likely apartment from their black van to make sure that they'd found their target. The kind of people who might just send a couple of wholesome-looking operatives to Jon's school to charm answers out of his teachers.

Jamie stood up, scraping the chair violently in his nervousness, and quickly gathered up his stuff. Maria snagged his arm. "Hey, where are you going? Rasmussen's gonna be back in a minute."

"Uh... tell him I was sick," Jamie babbled. "Listen, I've got to- I've really gotta go." He held up a hand to forestall any questions. "I'll explain, um- I might be back this afternoon, or else I'll talk to you tomorrow. I'll phone you! But, uh - I've got to go."

He scrambled out of the classroom, ignoring the curious stares that followed him out.

* * *

"O'Neill."

Teal'c was unsurprised to find his former teammate in the gym, taking his frustrations out in physical exertion. It was a habit he had often indulged in as a Colonel, although the duties and obligations of his new position of Brigadier General made it more difficult to arrange.

"T." O'Neill acknowledged him with a nod, already drenched in sweat. An ill-informed observer might believe such signs of strain to signify that O'Neill had grown too old and weak for these activities; Teal'c, and any who knew O'Neill well, would not need to have observed to know he had already been pushing himself further than many younger men would attempt.

Teal'c settled himself at the weight machine before O'Neill could invite him to engage in practise combat. O'Neill was a most excellent sparring partner; although he, like the rest of the Tauri stationed at Stargate Command, could not match Teal'c in either strength or in reach, he had the skills of an experienced warrior and continued to present a challenge. However, Teal'c did not intend to assist him in his current quest to exhaust himself.

"It appears that Baal has abducted the members of SG-6 for uncertain ends," Teal'c observed. O'Neill favoured the art of direct talking - one of the reasons that Teal'c had found him one of the easiest of the Tauri to relate to at first, despite his many strange actions and figures of speech. Though Teal'c had quickly grown to greatly value the companionship of Daniel Jackson and Colonel Carter, it was his bond with O'Neill as brother warriors that had formed the first and would always hold strongest. And therefore it was his duty to divine the cause of his fellow warrior's troubled mood.

"Oh, I think it's pretty obvious what he wants them for." O'Neill's face was stony as he pounded the punching bag.

The details of O'Neill's incarceration with Baal had never been fully revealed, but the aftereffects of them lingered. O'Neill would never allow discomfort to show beyond what was unavoidable, but it was clear to all of them that his temperament had changed in subtle ways since his return, growing even more insular and at times more subdued. The year in which Daniel Jackson had been absent from them had been hard on them all, but it was O'Neill who had suffered the greatest.

"You believe that Baal intends to torture them for information to aid him in his search," Teal'c said. He knew that Colonel Carter or Daniel Jackson might have hesitated over the word torture, wary of bringing up dark memories, but he knew O'Neill would not appreciate the substitution of a softer word.

"They're a science team, investigating ruins left behind by the Ancients. Baal's not dumb." The lack of any 'for a snakehead' qualifier spoke volumes. "Whatever he's after, he wants to know if we know about it."

"Then is it possible he is searching for a piece of technology that we already possess?"

It took a deft touch to attempt to lure O'Neill into optimism; the sharp headshake and increase in the power of blows to the punching bag told him he had not succeeded. "The only thing we've got that would matter to Baal is the planetary defence system, and he already knows he can't get at that without invading Earth."

"Then perhaps he is continuing the search for the Lost City that Anubis began," Teal'c suggested.

O'Neill grunted doubtfully, but did not respond.

This seemed an advantageous point to change the subject. "Colonel Carter and Daniel Jackson have yet to report back on the status of your clone," he noted.

"So he's not at the school." O'Neill shrugged. "Probably gone fishing."

"I find it unlikely that your duplicate would shirk his duty in this manner," Teal'c said.

"Yeah, well... Me and high school didn't work out so well the first time around." O'Neill finally backed away from the punching bag, mopping his brow with a towel.

"Then perhaps your clone has come to the conclusion that his current position is unsuited to his temperament."

O'Neill gave him a sceptical look. "You're suggesting that he's 'acting out'? By padding out his homework assignments with classified material there's no way in hell he understands?" He accompanied the term 'acting out' with the two-handed gesture that Daniel Jackson had variously referred to as 'air quotes' and 'really, really obnoxious'.

"Perhaps he simply wishes to reestablish some contact with his old life," Teal'c suggested neutrally.

O'Neill threw the towel down and gave him a sharp look. "Then he should have sent a postcard." He walked out.

* * *

John had been expecting something in the order of a shrine, but the building that housed the Iaeronan's Ancient relics was more like a museum. A lot like a museum, in fact, complete with an annoyingly enthusiastic curator.

"Ah, yes. Visitors, yes." He was a little round man with big sideburns who couldn't stop smiling. "You come to visit our history? Very wise, very wise. We must look to the effects of previous Cycles to see where we are going."

"Yeah," said John. Looking backwards to see the future. Why not? It was no weirder than ninety percent of the other things he'd encountered in the Pegasus Galaxy.

"We'd like to see your collection of crystals," McKay butted in impatiently.

"All in good time, McKay," he said pointedly. He swivelled to face the curator again. "Please - show us your history." The little man bowed deeply, then bustled on ahead.

"Oh, thank you, Major," McKay grumbled, as soon as he was - well, not nearly out of earshot, actually. "What I really wanted to do was spend my afternoon looking at pieces of ten thousand year old pottery. You realise these people are still at the pointy stick level of hunting technology? They have no idea what a power crystal is. They have no idea what power is! I'd be surprised if they've invented the windmill, never mind harnessed the electron. They're so married to the idea of following some preordained cycle of events that they refuse to even _try_ to reverse engineer the relics of a more advanced civilisation - not that they _could_, but they could at least _invent_ the idea of scientific study. These people would be using high precision power sources for paperweights, if they'd actually come far enough to create paper."

"Did you have to tell him right away that we were interested in the crystals?" John hissed.

"We will have to make our interest plain at some stage, Major," Teyla pointed out.

"Yes, exactly," said McKay airily. John was beginning to wish he'd assigned himself the guard position outside that he'd given to Ford. Not that he was expecting trouble from the Iaeronans, but, well, they hadn't been expecting trouble from most of the people who'd given them trouble, either.

"However," Teyla added, "it would be wise not to offend the Iaeronans unduly in pursuit of the crystals; there may be other benefits their good will can provide us."

"Like what?" McKay said impatiently. "The incredible technology of- my God, is that supposed to be clockwork?" He wandered over to one of the displays. "Hasn't anybody on this planet heard of gear ratios? It only takes the most rudimentary understanding of torque to realise-"

"_Food_, McKay." John jerked his head in the direction of the party they'd just come from. "In case you haven't noticed, it's hunt season out there."

"I believe the Iaeronans would be amenable to trade, if properly approached," Teyla agreed.

"And that means no-" John broke off as the curator finally brought them to the crystals, and McKay shot off in a gleeful beeline for them. "-Doing that," he finished lamely.

Teyla's initial assessment that the Iaeronans saw them as purely decorative appeared to be right, since the Ancient power sources were displayed in a glass case alongside several other polished stones and small ornaments. There were five altogether, but he could see at a glance that one of them was chipped. They were arranged artistically in a little pyramid that made it difficult to know for sure if the others were similarly damaged.

"Looks like they haven't been stored that carefully," he murmured to McKay. He winced at the thought of some long ago Iaeronan kid practising juggling with them or using them for oversized marbles.

"Yes, well, we only need three," McKay said dismissively.

"Need?" the curator asked, his friendly face abruptly growing more suspicious. John cursed McKay's uncontrollable babble impulse. If Ford's warning about the people's aversion to reusing old technologies held true, then revealing what the crystals were could jeopardise not just their chances of obtaining them, but any future trade.

He was opening his mouth to say something - admittedly, possibly something stupid - in the line of damage control, when an unearthly howl from outside interrupted.

John was reaching for his weapon when it came again, and he recognised it as not the sound of a wild animal, but some sort of horn being blown. He turned to the curator urgently. "What does that noise mean?"

"The Cycle of Purging is beginning!" the little man said cheerfully.

"Okay, somebody please tell me that doesn't involve vomiting," McKay said warily.

John's radio crackled to life. "Major!" came Ford's breathless voice. "We've got trouble. It's the Wraith."

* * *

Jamie took the stairs up to Jon's apartment at speed. Every step of the way he was telling himself that Jon was fine - probably asleep, probably had 'flu, he'd answer Jamie's frantic knocking with that "What planet are you from?" stare he did so well...

The door was standing open.

Jamie came to a staggering halt, aware of his own ragged breathing just as he desperately wanted to quiet it. What if someone had hurt- killed! - Jon, and they were in there right now?

What if someone was in there _trying_ to kill Jon, and it was happening right now while he stood around too frightened to go in?

Jamie took a deep breath, kicked the door the rest of the way open, and ran in.

His heart was stuttering so fast every shadow looked like an attacker, and it took a moment to realise that no one was coming at him. The lights were all off, but he could see a faint blue glow coming from Jon's bedroom.

He approached the doorway cautiously, and peered inside. The glow was coming from the other side of the bed. Jamie peered around it - and flinched back. Jon was slumped on the floor, the stone sculpture from the day before clutched against his chest. It was transparently _not_ a piece of African art, as Jamie could now see it was the stone that was glowing.

The panicked certainty that Jon was dead lasted only a fraction of a second, for he was twitching restlessly, like a feverish man dreaming. His lips were moving, and when Jamie leaned close he could hear Jon mumbling. It wasn't English, but the sounds were too regular, too fluidly made to be nonsense. Jamie thought it sounded a little bit like Latin. Was he praying?

"Jon! Jon, wake up." He shook the other boy by the shoulder, but got no response beyond a shudder and a break in the rhythm of the muttering.

"_Nim celerae_," Jon gasped urgently to himself. "_Non paratus_..."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say." Jamie patted his arm vaguely, uncertain what to do. His eyes fell on the... glowing stone football. Probably he needed a better name for it than that, but considering he had _no_ idea what the hell it was, that was going to have to do.

What the hell was that light? Some kind of radiation? Okay, he was fairly sure lethal radiation didn't _actually_ glow outside of sci-fi B-movies, but still, the fact that it was emitting light meant that could be emitting something else too. For all he knew, it was the stylish new approach to designing nuclear waste canisters.

Whatever it was, Jamie didn't like the way that Jon was clutching it. Using a corner of the bedding as a pathetic shield for his hands, he pried the football from Jon's grip.

As soon as he did, the blue light went dead. All the same, he let go of it hurriedly, mindful that it could still be giving off energy he couldn't see.

As Jamie dithered over what to do with the thing, Jon started to stir. Jamie knelt beside him. "Jon?"

Before he knew what was happening, a hand snaked out and closed around his wrist. Next moment, he found himself face down on the floor with a knee in the small of his back and his arm twisted up behind him. Surprisingly, the position barely hurt at all; Jamie somehow found that even more disturbing than if he'd been in agony. Any idiot could throw you around, but to carefully judge exactly how much damage to do took training. And practise.

What the hell kind of sixteen-year-old got that kind of practise?

"Um, hi?" he said into the carpet. After a silence that seemed slightly embarrassed, Jon let him up.

"Sorry," he said, adjusting his shirt. Jamie dusted down his own clothes and blinked at him.

"Perfectly understandable," he said. "If you're the President's personal bodyguard! What the hell?"

"What are you doing here?" Jon glanced at the alarm clock, then did a double-take. "What am _I_ doing here? Shouldn't we both be at school?"

"Jon, what's going on?" Jamie refused to be distracted. "Your apartment was unlocked, and when I came in I found you collapsed on the floor clutching that thing and babbling in Latin."

"I don't speak Latin," Jon said. "Nor do I babble," he added, more indignantly. He moved toward the bed, studying the stone football as if he'd never seen it before, and reached out for it. "This thing-?"

The second his fingertips brushed the surface, it blazed with a brilliant blue light. Jamie yanked him away from it and the light went out again.

"Oh, yeah. And it was doing that," he added. "Jon, what _is_ that thing?"

"It's a football-shaped... glowy stone thing," Jon told him. Which didn't really help all that much, but at least felt like it was pitched to about his level.

"What's going on?" Jamie asked again. "There were those guys that came to your apartment the other night, and there were people talking to Mr Rasmussen at school."

"Yeah? What kind of people?" Jon asked faux-casually as he moved to the dresser and removed a black sweater and a dark knitted cap.

"Uh... suits. Well, the guy was in a suit, and the woman looked like she wanted to be."

"This woman - tall? Blonde? Did the guy have glasses?"

"Yeah... you were _expecting_ them to come after you?" he realised. Jon shrugged.

"I had a hunch. Was there a third guy with them? Black, wearing some kind of hat, built like a haystack's bigger brother?"

"Noo - I think if I'd seen him, I might have mentioned him first," Jamie pointed out. Jon waved his concerns away with a casual hand and adjusted his own hat.

"Don't worry about them. They're not with the other guys. We're old friends."

"Then who are the other guys?" Jamie demanded. "And what does that football thing have to do with all this? You looked really _sick_, Jon."

"Yeah, well, I'm better now." Jon grabbed a pair of boots from the bottom of his closet - black, like everything else he was now wearing. "Listen, I appreciate the concern, but there are some things I've got to do now, so you've gonna have to go."

"Oh, no way." Jamie folded his arms. "I don't know what this is, but I know it's serious, and I know you were seriously out of it just now. You think, whatever it is you're doing, you can afford to collapse and start babbling Latin in the middle of it?"

They locked gazes for a long moment. Jon had the whole 'eyes boring into you' thing down pat, but determination helped Jamie stand his ground. After a moment Jon finished lacing his boot up and stood.

"You come here on your bike?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Okay." He sighed heavily. "I need transport, and since _somebody_ decided I couldn't get a driver's licence yet, looks like a freakin' _moped_ is the best offer I'm getting." A brief flicker of frustration crossed his face. "You can drive me. But when I tell you to stay, you _stay_, and when I tell you to run, your feet don't even hit the ground. Clear?"

"Clear," Jamie echoed sombrely.

And wondered just what in the hell he'd managed to get himself into.


	6. Chapter 6

** VI **

Sam supposed that pitting her computer skills against the unsuspecting administrator of a standard high school network was just a _little_ bit unsporting. But then, any idiot who used a password that was directly related to his username deserved exactly what he got.

"I'm in," she told Daniel, minutes after she'd sat down at the terminal.

Daniel wandered over from his lookout position, hands in his pockets. "Remind me again what you're expecting to find from this?"

She was still scanning the list of names. "This." She indicated _joneill1_ with the mouse pointer.

"You're gonna look at Jack's English essays?" Daniel considered. "Actually, that's not a bad idea."

Sam smirked to herself as she discovered the password was 'Steenburgen'. "I'll email you a copy. No, I'm looking for- Oh, now _that's_ interesting."

"What did you find?" He leaned over.

"I'm not sure. Some kind of spy program attached to his user account. Could be monitoring his email traffic, or just keeping track of when he's logged on to the system."

"Good way to get a fix on his position if you're planning to, say, break into his apartment," Daniel noted. Sam nodded, mind already on a dozen possible approaches to tackling the program. But which one was least likely to trigger a self-destruct function or send a warning back to the program's creator?

"This is gonna take some time," she warned.

"Okay." Daniel was wandering back toward the doorway when his cell phone rang. She half listened to his side of the conversation. "Hello? Oh, hey, Jack. Yeah, we're still at the school. I don't know, he's not here. Maybe. We were gonna swing by- What? Okay. Yeah. We'll be right there."

He hung up and turned back to her. "Something's going on. I don't know what. Jack wants us back at the base."

"All right." Sam made a few final keystrokes, then logged out of the system. "It's probably better if I finish this up off-campus anyway." Less chance of being interrupted by wandering teenagers. "You think we should send someone to check out Jon's apartment?" she asked.

Daniel shrugged and grimaced. "I don't know. Jack said he's probably fishing, and, well... he should know."

Yes, he should - but that was no guarantee he'd be completely honest with them. The General's non-relationship with his clone was a complicated business; Jack O'Neill had never been an open man about his private life, and technically Jon's private life was his as well. Sam bit her lip.

"He's not going to thank us if we send a couple of random airmen to tramp through his apartment," she decided.

"No. The last thing we want to do is antagonise him," Daniel agreed. The clone was probably going to be even more difficult to approach than the General himself. Sam remembered her superior's hostile reaction to his robot double, and he hadn't been too pleased about that incident with the crystal-

Okay, when you got to comparing the different ways your boss had reacted to various alien-created duplicates of him, your life was officially weird. Sam shrugged and sighed.

"I guess we just have to hope that whatever's going on here, it can wait until we've dealt with this crisis," she said.

* * *

"McKay! Keep up!" John hollered impatiently at the stumbling scientist. There were times when Rodney had to be prodded and poked into moving, but the middle of a Wraith attack wasn't usually one of them.

"Keep what up?" McKay muttered irritably, wheezing as he jogged. "Major, where are we _going_? Wouldn't it have been more sensible to stay in the museum?"

"The Iaeronans didn't seem to think so," Ford said.

"It is their practise to scatter when a culling begins," Teyla explained. "They believe that, just as the hraka scatter before their hunters, it is their place to run before the Wraith. The strongest and most fleet of foot survive, while those who are caught go on to feed the Cycle."

"Ah, yes, survival of the fittest." McKay grimaced. "A fine approach to biological selection. Not the most intelligent way to wage a war. No wonder these people have no scientists."

"Yeah, I guess they've bred out the 'sit at a computer and bitch at your lab assistants to bring you things' gene," John said. "McKay, _come on_."

With typical contrariness, McKay came to a halt instead, hands on his knees to brace himself as he leaned over. "Okay, I'm gonna hurl," he told the ground. "I knew that hraka meat was a mistake. 'It's supposed to be that dark', they say. Obviously, their natural selection policy extends to serving meals. Probably they think nothing of a few attendees keeling over at every feast. 'Oh, dear, Uncle Bob's pitched over into the second course. Never mind - praise the Cycle! Now, pass the salt, I'm going back for another helping of Russian roulette roast.' Oh, God, I'm going to die."

"The only thing wrong with the hraka meat was the fact that you had three helpings of it. I'm not surprised you can't run." John prodded him back into motion; the sound of Wraith darts overhead was still uncomfortably close, and he wanted to get as far from the Stargate as possible.

"Says the man who can eat twice his body weight in pie and still look like a famine victim. Major, if the biology department ever figured out the secret of whatever chemical reaction goes on in your digestive system, the energy crisis would be solved. We'd be able to power the entire city for a year with a bowl of sugar." McKay's diatribe was punctuated by episodes of alarming panting, and his face was turning a worrying shade of grey. Maybe he really was suffering a bad reaction to the meal. There could be any amount of toxins in the meat that the Iaeronans had built up an immunity to.

John made a decision. "Okay, Ford, Teyla, I want you to head toward those cliffs we saw and see if there are any caves or any sort of structures out there. McKay and I will stick around here and-" McKay wasted no time in dropping his gear and collapsing on the ground. John wrinkled his nose at him. "I was gonna say 'scout around for any sort of natural shelter in the woods'," he finished.

McKay looked down at his right hand, splayed in the dirt, and blinked a few times before looking up.

"Does a buried underground bunker count as natural?"

The patch of ground under his fingers began to glow with the familiar light of activated Ancient technology.

* * *

"So why have we come here?" Jamie asked. It looked like just about any other high-tech office building; the sign on the front said 'Bradleigh Biotech'.

"It's the centre of operations for a friendly little organisation involved in... research projects." The way Jon said it, Jamie suspected he wasn't talking about curing cancer.

"How do you know about this place?" he asked.

Jon grimaced. "They approached me about taking part in a little scheme of theirs. I politely declined. Took a while for them to take the hint, though, so the second time around I followed 'em home."

"Why are they interested in you?" Jamie didn't doubt that they were; whatever Jon's story was, he was no ordinary sixteen-year-old.

And he had a remarkable talent for turning his face as blank as a brick wall. "Let's just say... I saw some things a while back I'm not supposed to talk about, involving some technology that's still classified at the highest level. And it looks like these guys have got themselves a piece of that, and they're thinking they can get me to work it for them a lot easier than they can a bunch of high-profile government types who are out to arrest their asses."

"Technology like a certain glowy football thing?" Jamie guessed.

"Something like," Jon agreed, hiding Jamie's moped away in the middle of some bushes. Jamie winced at the thought of what that was doing to his paintwork.

"So what are you gonna do? Hey, put the chain on," he added. Jon shook his head.

"Rule one of espionage: it's dumb to chain your getaway vehicle to a tree. Rule two: you? Are staying right here with the bike."

"Oh, no way-"

"Ah!" Jon waved a finger in his face. "You stay." He pulled down his hat to cover more of his hair, and settled down to watch the building for a while. Jamie crouched beside him.

"What are you going to do?" he asked again.

"Get in, check out the scope of the operation and find out whether they have any more little surprises like that thing they planted in my apartment. Then get out and call in some friends to deal with the problem."

Jamie winced. "Wouldn't it be better to call in the friends _first_?"

"Don't want to spook 'em," Jon said. "I get these people mobilised, you can bet this place will be all squeaky clean and innocent looking before they've pulled into the parking lot. Now _stay here_."

Before Jamie could argue further, he had darted off toward the building. Jamie watched him locate a delivery entrance, get it open via some unclear bit of fiddling, and disappear into the shadows.

He obeyed Jon's parting instruction... for about fifteen minutes. Then he got itchy. What if something had gone wrong? Even if Jon had some kind of funky special infiltration training, a teenager in a biotech facility was going to stand out like a sore thumb. And his all-black secret agent outfit might be useful in the dead of night, but it was more like the dead of mid-afternoon. Even if that big glossy building was only a front, there was surely still some sort of activity going on inside there.

Jamie came to a decision. Maybe he would just sort of sidle over to that delivery entrance, take a quick peek inside. And if there was no sign of danger, maybe he would just go in a little further, see if there was any kind of commotion that might indicate Jon had been rumbled.

A few minutes later, he was creeping through the halls, horribly conscious of the way his sneakers squeaked on the polished flooring. Maybe this place really was a nothing but a front - it certainly seemed empty. All the hallways were incredibly samey, and he tracked the number of turnings carefully. Somehow he sensed that people on stealth infiltration missions didn't stop and ask directions.

What the hell did he think he was doing?

Jamie rounded the next corner-

-And was knocked to the floor, his squawk of dismay stifled by the hand clamped with brutal force over his mouth. He was flipped over, a knee pressed into his throat... and then released. It all happened so fast he could do nothing but stay lying dazed on the floor.

Jon's face loomed over him, displaying variations on a theme of 'pissed'. "Okay, did I not-?"

He abruptly silenced himself and Jamie too, this time with a much gentler but no less authoritative hand. The sound of footsteps approached, and the two of them backed away...

Right into the arms of two very large, very ugly looking guys. A third man, this one in a tailored suit and lilac tie, appeared between them. He had the kind of smile Jamie associated with his math teacher right before he dropped the test from hell on them. The smile of a guy who knew he was the only one in the room going to be enjoying himself anytime soon.

"Ah, Mr O'Neill," he said. "So good of you to join us." He cocked an eyebrow toward Jamie, looking more dismissive than curious. "And you've brought a little friend. How sweet."

Jon seemed totally relaxed, hands thrust into his pockets as he rocked back and forth on his heels. "Hawkins. Hi. Nice place you've got here. Love the tie, it really complements the decor. Your mom pick that out for you?"

Hawkins flashed that unpleasant smile again. "Sadly, no. Dear old mom was always one for more... practical gifts." He produced a handgun, pointing it unerringly at Jon's head.

Jon didn't even flinch. "Nice. My mom was always into needlework, herself."

"So sad, to see a person's talents constrained by gender roles," Hawkins said. "Or, for that matter, denied thanks to foolish delusions about youth." Jon narrowed his eyes. Hawkins gestured with his head, without the slightest deviation in his aim. "This way, gentlemen."

Jamie had a nasty feeling that he was in so far over his head he was about to implode from the water pressure.

* * *

"Dad!" Sam greeted her father delightedly. They'd been out of touch even longer than usual this time around; since Earth's alliance with the Tok'ra and the free Jaffa had collapsed, her father had been staying away, trying to re-establish Selmak's position in the Tok'ra hierarchy.

"Hey, Sammie." He gave her a warm but distracted smile as she and Daniel took their customary seats at the briefing room table.

It was funny, she reflected, how the image of him in his Tok'ra uniform - if you could apply that term to the hide tunics they all seemed to wear most of time - had become her default image of him, superseding the stern Air Force General she'd known him as most of her life. He might have originally agreed to become a host to Selmak to save his life, but the unlikely partnership really had been good for him.

"So, what's up, Jake?" The General asked, lounging back in his chair. "Tok'ra finally figured out they had nobody to send on all those pesky suicide missions and decided to come crawling back?"

"Actually, no." Her dad smiled wryly. "I managed to persuade the council to see the merit in bringing the SGC in on this particular mission, although there were some objections to giving you the full background."

The General narrowed his eyes. "I'll bet there were."

"Baal is up to something," her dad said simply.

"Of that we are aware." Teal'c pressed his fingertips together.

"After the disappearance of Anubis from the scene, Baal is probably the major player remaining among the System Lords," her father said. "His more powerful rivals are forming alliances and trying to hold out, but the bit players are flocking to take sides - and no Goa'uld likes to pick a side that looks like losing."

"Baal doesn't exactly have a reputation for playing well with others," the General said sardonically. His tone was always a fraction harder when he spoke about Baal, but his face betrayed nothing. Jack O'Neill was a man who would let the whole universe know it if you curtailed his fishing trip or someone took the last slice of pie, but when it came to a trifling little matter like the Goa'uld who'd repeatedly _tortured him to death_, he could give Teal'c lessons in inscrutability.

"Not usually, no," her father agreed. "But right now, he has the chance to pick and choose who he invites to join him... and we're a little worried about who he's been picking and choosing." He sighed slightly. "By their nature, the Goa'uld are conquerors and scavengers, not inventors. They rarely make their own technology, but some are better at making use of what they've stolen than others."

"Like Nirrti," said Sam, suppressing a shudder. He nodded.

"In some ways, the lower ranks have it even rougher than the System Lords when it comes to backstabbing and infighting. Those without territory or armies have to rely on having some skill that would make a more powerful Goa'uld want to keep them around. A couple of months ago, Baal started rounding up all of those with a reputation for working with captured technology."

Daniel leaned forward. "Isn't Baal fairly technically-minded himself? I mean, he was able to adapt and make use of the Avenger virus when we used it against him. So he must know how to program DHDs."

Her father nodded soberly. "Baal is probably the closest thing to a computer expert the Goa'uld have. He understands Ancient technology at least as well as any of our scientists do - maybe better. So if he's calling in the reinforcements, the odds are that it's _not_ because he's found an interesting gadget and he wants to know what it does."

"They're building something for him," Sam realised.

"That's right, Sam - and that's not all. I said he was collecting Goa'uld engineers... well, he's just dismissed them all. Whatever they were working on, he doesn't need any more help to finish it."

The General scrunched up his face. "Can I just say, I love how your news always reaches us in such a timely manner."

"Isn't it possible that he's just... given up?" Daniel tried optimistically. "I mean, Goa'uld. Not really known for their unending patience."

"If the project had failed, he would not have allowed his inferiors to live to testify to it, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said.

"Teal'c's right." Her father nodded "He's taking enough of a dent to his illusion of godhood from all the Jaffa defections; if he'd failed, he'd never have let them walk out of there alive. The fact that he did at all means that he's pretty confident that whatever they were working on is nothing they can replicate."

"Yeah, well, I think we can guess where he got it from." The General sat up. "He just hit a dig site on P2C-491, where SG-6 were scouting for possible Ancient technology. He took four of my men."

Her dad smiled. "Well, as it happens, I might just be able to help you get them back. I came here to ask to borrow the members of SG-1 for an infiltration mission. We have a lead on the location of his technology project. Whatever it is, we can't possibly allow it to remain in his hands; we need to find it, steal it if we can, but failing that, destroy it."

* * *

The buried panel McKay had found opened up what appeared to be the Ancient equivalent of a bomb shelter. Or perhaps they'd just felt like building underground - who knew? The hatch slid open as smoothly as their technology always did, although a cascade of dirt fell down into the chamber below.

Ford aimed his weapon down into the darkness, and waited for a tense moment to see if anything stirred. Even before they'd encountered the Wraith, the Goa'uld had taught SGC-trained personnel to be wary of assuming any place was deserted just because it had been sealed shut for a century or four. Alien nasties had a bad habit of popping up long after any decent law-abiding lifeform should have crumbled into so much dust.

This place, fortunately, didn't seem to be populated by anything but dust bunnies. Major Sheppard jumped down into it and the chamber immediately lit up - whether in response to the motion or the Major working his mojo, Ford wasn't sure. Other people had the ATA gene, but even those who came by it naturally instead of through Doctor Beckett's gene therapy often had to work hard to make use of it. The Major seemed to use his gene with as little conscious effort as any other part of his body.

The underground chamber was cylindrical, and big enough around to have fitted his grandparents' big old carved oak dinner table. There were no kind of furnishings or any features on the walls, but a couple of odds and ends were piled to one side: bowls and things. Ford assessed them with a military eye and then dismissed them, but expected McKay to give them a closer once-over in case one of them was a well-disguised technological gizmo. However, when he looked up, the scientist was still hovering on the edge of the entrance hatch, looking decidedly grey.

"Jump, McKay!" the Major called impatiently.

"The drop is not too severe," Teyla encouraged him more sympathetically. But Ford wasn't sure it was vertigo that was giving McKay a case of the wobbles. He'd previously filed the food poisoning theory under typical McKay bitching, but now he was beginning to wonder.

"Sit down on the edge and drop in," he advised. McKay managed to follow that directive at least, although it was really more of a controlled slide. Teyla took hold of his arm as he landed to stop him falling to his knees.

Sheppard raised a lazy hand and the roof closed up above them. Ford was braced for the feeling of claustrophobia, but it didn't arrive. The air was still as fresh as it had been out in the forest, and the inside of the ceiling emitted a rippling, naturalistic light that was kind of like sunshine through leaves.

"Nice," said the Major, settling back against the curved wall. He pulled a mildly startled face, and pressed his knuckles into the floor beside him. "Hey. Squishy."

Ford prodded the ground with the toe of his boot, and sure enough, it yielded under the pressure. With a whoop, he jumped up and deliberately landed on his ass. Not much of a bounce, sadly, but some pretty nice impact absorption. He grinned, and stretched out his legs.

Teyla smiled, in that way she had of looking amused without being mocking, and wandered over to examine the pottery.

"These are very old," she said, turning some sort of cup over in her hands, "but I do not think any of these things were made by the Ancestors."

"I don't think the people who relocated their flying city to a whole different galaxy were much into kiln-crafts," said Doctor McKay, the tone rather duller than usual.

"Hey, we've got mass produced synthetic fabrics, but my grandma still knits," Ford pointed out.

"Oh, of course she does," said McKay, not bothering to look up from where he was lying flat on his back with a hand draped over his eyes. He gave a few dry coughs, and Ford tossed him a water canteen.

"If the Iaeronans have scattered into the forest it may take some hours for the Wraith to depart," Teyla said. "It would be best to wait until night has fallen to emerge." Sheppard nodded, and looked up at the lighting effect on the inside roof.

"You think that thing changes with the outside light level?"

That was the kind of question McKay would normally be all over - whether trying to answer it or scathingly deriding the fact that it had been asked at all - but he didn't make any response. When Ford glanced over at him he was still slumped in the same position, and he hadn't touched the water.

Ford was beginning to get seriously worried.


	7. Chapter 7

** VII **

Hawkins, whoever he was, palmed the two of them off on his pair of heavies while he went to 'deal with something'. Jamie suspected that might be a ploy to press home that their presence was insignificant. He really didn't need any convincing. While Jon was as cool as you could get without being pronounced dead, he was frightened half out of his mind. He didn't need any experience with top secret projects to know that these were the kind of men who would think nothing of killing off a pair of inconvenient sixteen-year-olds - and probably wouldn't get caught for it, either.

"In." The taller of the two thugs curtly gestured them toward a doorway with a card and keypad controlled lock. Jamie hurried to obey the order, but Jon hung back and held his ground.

"You know, you boys really need to work on your repartee," he said, screwing up his face. "That monosyllabic thing... don't get me wrong, it's a classic, but the world expects a little more these days. A little back and forth, a little banter - people want to feel their thugs are _engaged_ with the job, it's not just another act of mindless violence to them."

"In," the man repeated, with no change in inflection.

Jon gave him a smirky grin. "Of course, you're a man who knows where his strengths lie, doesn't mind the typecasting... I can respect that-"

The second thug lashed out with a sharp kick that caught Jon in the back of the legs and caused him to stumble.

"In," his partner repeated implacably.

"Okay, I'm going, I'm going." He sauntered in after Jamie and the door slid shut behind them.

Jamie sank down to the floor with shaky legs while Jon prowled the confines of their cell, examining it. Jamie didn't see what there was to look at. Whatever the room had been intended for, it was empty now. There were no convenient vents, sharp or heavy objects, or even any windows besides the glass pane in the door. Which he didn't doubt was reinforced glass.

Jon too sat down, hugging his knees in a posture that managed to look both relaxed and fully alert. He placed himself between Jamie and the door, which Jamie didn't think was a coincidence.

"So - what now?" he asked tentatively, when he thought he could trust his voice not to shake too much.

"We wait," Jon said calmly, resting his head back against the wall. "Hawkins still wants me to work this gadget for him. He's not dumb enough to think he can get anything out of me by threatening to hurt you, so hang tough, okay? Nothing to worry about."

Jamie didn't really think he could believe the words, but the delivery was still somehow reassuring. He sat back, and tried to concentrate on breathing slowly and emphatically _not_ freaking out.

There wasn't much to look at besides Jon, his own shoes, and the elbow of one of the guards just beyond the door. Even so, it took him some time to notice that Jon had started to shiver. He didn't think it was from nerves, and the temperature in their makeshift cell was fine.

"Jon?" No response. "Jon?"

Jamie crawled forward - some stupid instinct telling him to stay on the floor so if the guards looked in, they wouldn't think he was trying anything - and touched Jon's shoulder. Jon slumped sideways, his head lolling. He would have looked unconscious if not for the fact that his eyes were partway open, rolled so far back that only the thinnest sliver of brown still showed.

It was creepy as hell, and Jamie was deathly afraid he was having some kind of seizure. "Jon!" A more violent shake didn't wake him, and Jamie laid him down on the floor on his back, pulling off his own jacket to use as padding under his head. Jon's breathing sounded irregular, but as Jamie moved in closer to try and take a pulse, he realised that the gasps were actually words.

"_Corp... non ficere... commutatis inver..._"

It might have been gibberish, but it seemed like _language_ gibberish, and that was somehow even more disturbing than the idea of him speaking in tongues. Maybe Jon hadn't been born in the States, maybe that was the language of his home country he was speaking - and maybe he was telling all the secrets Hawkins wanted to hear. What if that football thing had, had drugged or brainwashed him into giving things away?

Jamie crouched beside him, totally helpless. His instinct was to yell for somebody to help them, but those guys weren't exactly friendly, and what if giving away Jon's condition played right into their hands? Should he risk it? What if it _was_ only nonsense words Jon was babbling, and every second Jamie delayed was one second closer to permanent brain damage? Hawkins wanted Jon alive, surely he'd give him medical attention, surely...

Jamie knelt by his friend's side and prayed for him to come out of it quickly, before any irrevocable decision had to be made.

* * *

"Sir?"

Jack looked up from his paperwork, grateful for the interruption. Concentrating on anything, let alone something as mind-bogglingly boring as supply requisition forms, was next to impossible when SG-1 was out in the field. They were under Jacob's wing, which meant something - better him than any other Tok'ra, _that_ was for damn sure - but going into the heart of Baal's territory, he'd have been happier if they'd taken SG-3 and 5, a handful of nukes, and an Asgard buddy to beam them out if things got hairy.

Besides, his kids had a gift for finding trouble wherever he sent them. He worried when they were out collecting soil samples on planets of no tactical value. He worried when they went to the _mall_. A Jaffa, a naquadah-enhanced astrophysicist and an archaeologist with a penchant for getting himself kidnapped were no combination to be let loose on an unsuspecting outside world.

"Hey, Siler. What's up?" He liked Siler. It was hard not to. Siler was That Guy; the one who was there before everybody else arrived, still there when everyone else left, and did mysterious things with wrenches that stopped the place falling apart around their ears. Being The Man had given Jack a whole new appreciation for That Guy. He'd have a whole lot less grey hair if he was allowed to run a mountain full of them.

"I was able to deconstruct that program Colonel Carter passed on to me and track it back to the source before the code erased itself."

"Yeah?" Jack pretended he knew what that was about. He really should try reading his memos some time.

"Yes, sir. It's passing information to a company called Bradleigh Biotech, located not far from the high school," Siler reported.

And now he was up to speed. Jack raised an eyebrow. "Some biotech company's monitoring my clone?"

"It certainly looks like it, sir. The final destination was heavily disguised, but I'm confident we have the address accurately pinpointed." When Siler said he was confident, you didn't quibble.

"Any chance they know you were...?" Jack debated the odds of getting his computer hacking lingo correct, and went with a little mime of typing instead.

"I don't think so, sir, but I can't say for sure."

"Thank you, Siler." He swung himself out of his chair, and headed straight for Reynolds' office.

"Sir!" The Colonel jumped up smartly. Jack wheeled around and started a walk and talk in the direction of the armoury.

"I need you to put a team together. We've got a local biotech company sniffing around my clone - I want to know what they've got, and what they think they can get."

"Yes, sir." Reynolds hesitated, and Jack recognised the expression well. The 'Oh, gawd, the old man wants to get out in the field again' look. He imagined he'd have cultivated one of his own if General Hammond had made a habit of inviting himself along on field operations, but dammit, with him it was different.

It _should_ be different. Hell, he was an old man with bad knees, but he'd been that most of his years as a Colonel, and it hadn't slowed him down. Much. He'd known when he took the job that it came with a boatload of ugly responsibilities, but he hadn't counted on the invisible straightjacket of command that came with being the General. He'd built a career out of always, _always_ putting his team ahead of himself, and now it was his responsibility not to. A General had to survive to be there for _all_ his men, not just the first one he had a chance to take a bullet for.

Generals didn't stay out of the field because they were old, or unfit, or tired of taking risks. They stayed out because their duty placed them under an obligation to be the last man standing, and you couldn't be a good man and do that in an arena where other people were dying.

Still, you had to keep your hand in somehow. And paying a visit to a local biotech company was not _technically_ action, was it? Nobody could object to the General going along on what would surely amount to a lot of searching through laboratories and retrieving computer files. Of such decisions was Generalling made.

Or something like that.

Reynolds made a spirited attempt to head him off, nonetheless. "I'll get right on it, General. I'll head the team myself."

"Not so fast, Reynolds. If mini-me's involved in this, you're gonna need somebody who knows how he thinks." Jack gave his best 'what can you do?' shrug.

There was a brief hesitation, but Reynolds had the sense to know when he was beaten. "Yes, sir," he said, and slunk away.

* * *

Jon sat clutching his head, and Jamie regarded him worriedly. He'd barely said two words since he'd come out of his trance, and he was still shaking and sweating. Whatever was wrong with him, it was getting worse.

Jamie was sure that the glowing football device had caused this, though he couldn't guess how. Had Hawkins and his associates planted it in Jon's apartment? Why hadn't Jon gotten rid of it? Or had it sent him into the same kind of fit every time he touched it?

If it did, why hadn't it done the same to Jamie? And what did it mean that Jon was still showing the effects now he was outside of the device's influence? There were so many questions, but he was afraid of asking them in case the cell was bugged.

He let out a shaky little huff, not quite laughter. How the hell had he got himself into a situation where he was worrying about armed thugs and listening devices?

The electronic lock disengaged, and Jon immediately went into an alert crouch, the signs of his discomfort dropping away like a shed cloak. In the movies, Jamie reflected, they would have made a plan that involved one of them acting as a distraction while the other hid beside the door to jump the guards.

This not being the movies, he stayed right where he was, sitting on his ass, and tried to look non-threatening.

Thug number one - or possibly two, he'd forgotten his previous numbering system - roughly jerked Jon to his feet. Jamie, remembering the two occasions _he'd_ unwisely grabbed hold of Jon, wasn't sure if his limp non-reaction was a sign of incredible self-control... or that Jon was getting sicker by the moment.

He never got a chance to find out, either, because the two thugs hauled Jon away without a word of explanation. The door sealed behind them, and Jamie was left with nothing to do but sit back and wait.

* * *

The 'skylight' had begun to darken, roughly in synch with John's internal clock pointing to night. It was tough to pick up the rhythm of alien planets, but it seemed that not only had the Ancients had some bizarre preference for gate sites that resembled British Columbia, they liked a pretty regular day cycle too. Most of the planets they'd visited so far had a rotation period less than half a day out from that of Earth. This one ran long - he guessed thirty, thirty-two hours - so the odds were they'd been down here longer than it seemed they had.

There hadn't been any noise from above since they'd settled in to the shelter - which was a bitch, because that meant there was no way of telling whether there was simply no activity, or if the chamber was sound-proofed. He would have put McKay on finding that out hours ago, but...

McKay did not look good.

In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, McKay looked like crap. He was pale and sweating, and still giving that dry, squeaky little cough. John no longer took much comfort in the fact that it didn't seem to be accompanied by a chest infection. Even an irritation in the throat could be debilitating if it wouldn't let up, and at points McKay had been doubled over, coughing helplessly until tears came to his eyes. There was no way he was in any shape to run if the Wraith were hanging around.

Which meant John was left with that lovely fun part of his job responsibilities, making a Command Decision. Stay, where they'd be safer but not achieving anything, and hope McKay's condition didn't worsen; or go, hoping the Wraith would have followed their usual procedure and bugged out pretty quick after snatching up some locals, 'cause if they hadn't they were screwed.

Another cough from McKay decided him. If he was getting worse, sitting around on their asses in a bunker nobody else knew about was not gonna help him any... and even though it tasted fresh enough, there was a chance the trapped air down here was doing him no favours. Better to be on the move.

"Okay, everybody, we're moving out." He palmed a likely looking panel and was rewarded by the roof of the bunker sliding open. He waited, weapon raised, long enough to ascertain no one was about to jump them, then climbed out. So far, so quiet.

Ford fell into step beside him as they made their way through the undergrowth, Teyla watching their six and, without needing to be asked to, keeping an eye on McKay.

"We need to get the doc back to Atlantis, Major," Ford said. John nodded.

"Yeah. But he's not gonna be happy if we leave without those crystals."

"Think we can get them?" Ford asked.

John tilted his head back in the direction of the shelter. "I'm thinking we've got something new to bargain with." The location of a handy hiding place undetectable by the Wraith had to be worth a couple of power crystals - especially when the locals couldn't use them as anything more than museum pieces.

They both went onto higher alert at the sound of screams in the distance. John signalled the others to stay back and cautiously led the approach. As the trees began to thin out, he flattened himself against the trunk of one and peered around it.

They'd crept up on... one hell of a party.

The screams came from a pack of kids who were chasing each other back and forth. The adults were laughing, dancing, and generally behaving as if they hadn't been running for their lives a matter of hours ago.

John mentally cycled through possible hand signals to send his team, gave up, and gave them a big pantomime shrug instead. He stepped out from the cover of the treeline.

A skinny boy of about eleven - one of the kids Ford had befriended, he thought - waved and grinned at him.

"_Teo_ Sheppard! Welcome! Join the celebration."

John eyed the partying Iaeronans. "Ah, so this is a 'the Wraith have bugged out' shindig?" he surmised, beginning to relax.

"Yes! Eleven people were taken," the boy said cheerfully.

The relaxation process abruptly shifted into reverse. "And that's... a reason to celebrate, huh?"

The kid gave him a dazzling smile. "Oh yes, _Teo_ Sheppard. The hunters brought back many more than eleven hraka - it is a very good omen. When the hunt exceeds the cull, we can know our people will grow prosperous and our Cycle is in ascension."

He skipped off, apparently completely untroubled by the abduction of eleven of his people for a gruesome and untimely death.

John let his diplomatic smile slide back into the grimace it wanted to be.

Aliens. Go figure.

* * *

There was some sort of commotion going on in another part of the building.

Jamie's prison cell was not quite soundproof, but it had a definite muffling effect. He edged closer to the door, and could hear that the guards were conversing, though he couldn't pick out the words. From the tone and the body language, he could guess they were arguing about whether or not to leave their posts.

A moment later there was a strange, vaguely electronic noise, and a burst of blue-white lightning enveloped the right-hand guard. Before his partner could react, he was hit by an identical pulse.

The cell door slid open.

Jon appeared in the doorway, clutching a... well, from the way he held it, it appeared to be a gun of some kind, but the design was way beyond weird. It was a vaguely snake-like coil of metal, seemingly the wrong shape to include any ordinary firing mechanism.

"What's that?" Jamie demanded, scrambling to his feet.

"Top of the range highly classified military stun gun. You never saw it." Jon headed out of the cell at a jog, gesturing for Jamie to follow.

"They're not dead?" he asked. As he did, he spotted a pair of boots sticking out of a side passage further up. Jon grabbed hold of his chin and physically turned his head away.

"That guy is. Don't look."

"You _killed_ a guy?" he blurted, horrified.

"Not me. The base is under attack."

"Who by?" Jon didn't seem, on the surface, to be moving that fast, but it was deceptively difficult to keep up. He paused at every junction, smoothly flattening himself against the wall and scanning all directions before moving on.

"Possibly some friends of ours." Jon grimaced. "Possibly not. Let's not stick around to find out, huh?"

They reached a door that opened onto the outside world. Jon kicked it open, looked around, and then looked up. "Aw, _crap_," he said, with feeling.

"What?"

"Don't ask. Just- run." Jon punctuated his words with a strong shove. Jamie took off running across the parking lot without further prompting, headed for the bushes at the other side. It was close to full dark by now; they must have been in that cell for hours.

In an incredible moment of adrenaline-fuelled stupidity, Jamie actually took the first sharp bang for a car backfiring. It wasn't until the second shot whizzed past his head that he realised someone was on top of the building _shooting_ at them.

And not with one of Jon's crazy sci-fi stun guns, either.

Jamie didn't clearly remember the details of the frantic scramble across the lot. He just found himself, a few moments later, crouched down behind a van with Jon beside him.

"Stay put," Jon advised him, and did something to the passenger door. A second later he had it open, and crawled across the seats to get under the steering wheel. There was some rustling, a few grunts and some muffled swearing, and then the engine roared into life.

"Carter, I owe you," Jon said aloud to no one in particular, and gestured for Jamie to get in. "Come on. Sorry about your bike, but we can't risk going back for it. And get buckled up, I might have to do some dangerous driving."

Jamie wasn't sure if they were pursued or not; he stayed slumped down in his seat while Jon drove like a maniac, screeching through turns and breaking not just speed limits but possibly several laws of physics.

A maniac, but one who was in control of his vehicle. Jamie wasn't the least bit surprised that Jon could drive like a professional stuntman. Compared to the other talents he'd manifested this week, it was practically mundane.

"You okay?" Jon spared him a quick sideways glance in the mirror.

"I guess," he said shakily, pressing a hand to his chest. He had a sharp pain from the effort of running, and sweat was trickling down his stomach.

Or not. He held his hand up to catch the glow of the streetlights, and studied the dark liquid staining his fingers for a few surprisingly calm moments.

"Uh, Jon?" he said slowly. "Uh, sorry to interrupt, but... I think I might have been shot."


	8. Chapter 8

** VIII **

It was funny how quickly interstellar travel became as routine as hopping on a train. For all that Goa'uld technology was way ahead of their own and more Sam's area of expertise, Daniel suspected he could diagnose engine problems in a tel'tak more accurately than in his own car. He recognised the change in sound and vibration instantly as they dropped out of hyperspace, and ran to join the others on the bridge.

"This is it?" he asked, peering at the display. Somehow, no matter how often they did this, he could never quite get over the idea that the images they were seeing were real and not computer simulations. The planet that hung in space before them was painted in unwelcoming shades of red and grey that spoke of a turbulent atmosphere.

"Kelshan," said Selmak, nodding Jacob's head. "Our operative intercepted a transmission detailing Baal's intention to return here to oversee the final stages of the project."

Although Daniel would hardly have believed he could get used to the harsh tones of a symbiote speaking through its host, hearing tactical information from Selmak had become almost routine. Perhaps it was the fact that Selmak _did_ seem to prefer to take a back seat unless dispensing knowledge that was specifically hers rather than Jacob's. Most other Tok'ra symbiotes he'd met were a lot more eager to jump in and do the talking, and no matter how many times he heard about it being a mutually beneficial relationship, it still set his teeth on edge.

He didn't like to subscribe to the Jack O'Neill Book of Cynicism too often, but when it came to the Goa'uld... Well, the Tok'ra were nothing like the Goa'uld. Except for when they were.

For all that he'd fought tooth and nail to preserve it, he couldn't say he was _totally_ sorry the alliance between Earth and the Tok'ra had gone south.

"They do not appear to have detected our approach," Teal'c observed. "There is little evidence of activity on the surface of the planet."

"That ties with our information," Jacob said, back in control. "It's an underground research base, belonging to a minor Goa'uld called Teshram." Very minor, Daniel suspected; the name was failing to ring any mythological bells, which meant that Teshram had probably never had a chance to establish a foothold on Earth.

"One of Baal's hired consultants?" Sam asked, leaning forward. Her father nodded.

"Teshram's strictly small change. He used to be in the service of Cronus, but disappeared off the scene about six years ago. Rumour is that he tried to set a trap for Cronus that didn't spring the way he wanted it to."

"And Baal trusts this guy?" Daniel said sceptically.

"No Goa'uld ever truly trusts another, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c pointed out. "However, Teshram would be foolish to attempt to challenge Baal."

"Teal'c is right," Jacob agreed. "Baal's the head of the pack now. Even if Teshram somehow managed to take him out, there's no way he could hold on to Baal's territory. Every Goa'uld in the galaxy would be making a power grab. It's not like the old days where the System Lords kept each other in balance."

"Yeah, the good old days," Daniel said wryly. The System Lords' infighting might have worked to their advantage, but ultimately he had to subscribe to Jack's simplified theory of galactic politics. The less Goa'uld around, the better.

"So what's the plan?" Sam asked as she checked over her weaponry. After eight years of galactic exploration, Daniel could handle his as professionally as his military companions, though he'd never be as comfortable in a fire-fight. Still, this mission wasn't intended to be one.

For all the good pre-planning usually did them.

"The complex is quite large, but very little of it's actually in use," Jacob explained. "Baal no longer fully trusts his Jaffa, so he's been keeping tabs on the project personally. The place should be all but deserted. We can land the tel'tak close to one of the access hatches at the edge of the complex. They have sensors, but no personnel for patrols - provided we go in cloaked, they've got no way of knowing we're here."

"We know where this 'project' is being kept?" Sam asked, as they braced themselves for landing.

Jacob nodded. " According to our information, Baal's expecting to be finished with it in a matter of days, so it's imperative we handle this now."

"The question is, finished with what?" Daniel wondered.

Jacob brought them in for a smooth landing and stood up, fishing out a zat. "Now remember, our priority is to keep the technology out of Baal's hands. I have the codes to the base computer that should get us in to see it. If it's possible, we'll steal it, but if there's the slightest chance things are going to get hairy, better to destroy it than run the risk of Baal completing his project."

He spared a pointed glance for the members of SG-1. "And, tempting as it may be, remember that if the opportunity _does_ come up to take out Baal... killing the one Goa'uld who's keeping the others' attention occupied could end up being very bad news for the rest of the galaxy."

The three members of SG-1 exchanged glances, all aware that if that chance did come up, the political considerations weren't going to stop them.

* * *

Jon didn't even respond to Jamie's dazed admission, just pulled them off the road without a word and stopped the van.

"Out," he said, coming around to open the passenger door for him. His expression was kinder than the rather curt instruction, but he didn't look particularly worried. Or so Jamie thought. His vision was starting to go kinda donut-shaped, dark blotches blooming in the centre and at the corners, and when he tried to climb out, his legs were surprisingly weak.

Jon made no move to assist him, simply beckoned him away from the van. He said a word, but the sound of it blurred, and Jamie couldn't figure out if he was supposed to have understood it or not. Everything was going very wobbly...

Next thing he knew, he was slumped on the ground against the base of a tree. He didn't know if he'd walked there or Jon had dumped him, but he knew he couldn't stand up again. Dark blood stained his fingers where he'd been clutching his wounded chest.

_So this it,_ he thought, rather dispassionately. _This is what dying is like._

Jon's face loomed over him, a pale blotch in the darkness. Then bony but surprisingly strong fingers gripped his shoulder, and-

And.

Something radiated through him from Jon's grip: warmth, accompanied by something else that he wasn't sure he had a word for. The... something... gathered in the centre of his chest and _pulsed_.

And then, so rapidly he felt there should have been an audible pop, his vision straightened itself out. Time snapped back to normal from the stretched out pace it had been following.

Jamie saw Jon start to sway, and reflexively lunged to grab him as he fell. To his bemusement, his body obeyed the command easily, and without the slightest trace of pain. He helped lower Jon to the ground, then examined himself with trembling fingers.

There was still blood on his hands and on his T-shirt. But when he flattened it out to find the bullet hole, the pale skin beneath was whole and unmarked.

Jon had healed him.

He had no idea how that was possible, but that wasn't exactly important right now. Whatever Jon had done, it had obviously taken it out of him. His eyes were almost rolled back in his head, and he looked on the verge of slipping into another of those terrifying seizures. Jamie shook him by the arm.

"Jon! Jon. What can I do? Tell me what to do," he begged.

For a moment, Jon's dark eyes cleared and focused... but the words he spoke were not in English. "_Commutatis inver... enodatis..._ Atlantis," he said, and passed out.

* * *

The Goa'uld base appeared to be deserted.

Teal'c moved through the hallways with silent grace, all senses on alert. Although he had never visited Kelshan, it was intimately familiar. The Goa'uld stole from each other and everyone else, and the layout of the base was like many others he had walked for decades before any of the humans accompanying him had even been born.

Of course, in those long past days, stealth had been but an exercise for when he was training with Master Bra'tac. The First Prime of Apophis did not move with stealth. He shook the planet's foundations with his footsteps, as befit the servant of a god.

_False god_. The thought was as triumphantly defiant as it had been the first time, when despite the doubts that prompted it he had fully believed that Apophis would hear it in his mind and strike him down. For all that Apophis was long since vanquished and those world-shattering words free to be spoken aloud, the thrill of the forbidden remained. The habits of a century were not unlearned in years.

He did not believe the Tauri would ever understand what it meant for a Jaffa to defy his god and choose freedom - and that was truly what made them wondrous to him. They carried their freedom with them, neither jealously guarding it nor taking it for granted, but simply unable to conceive of living in any other state. It was a gift O'Neill had bestowed upon him that fateful day on Chulak, by the very act of assuming he already had it. He had asked Teal'c to assist, with the simple expectation that he was free to choose.

And Teal'c had chosen, and cast off slavery, and fought gods.

Against today's prey, he had sworn a special oath of _kel kalach tokeem kal'kek_ \- vengeance of the soul that grows even beyond death. It was not the Jaffa way to do so silently, but O'Neill was a man whose heart was kept in silence, and he would feel shamed, not honoured, by another taking a spoken vow in his name. O'Neill would never declare Baal a blood enemy, for to do so would be to declare that he had been caused pain.

So Teal'c made his vow in silence, but held to it as fiercely as any he had shouted for all the universe to hear. Today, perhaps, he would get the chance to fulfil it.

"This way." The Tok'ra Selmak was in charge of Jacob Carter's body now; Teal'c saw Daniel Jackson stiffen instinctively at the change in voice. His Tauri friends, he had noticed, seldom looked to body language unless speech was unavailable. Teal'c had been aware of the shift since it was first made several minutes ago.

They approached what experience told him would be the control centre of the base, and his alertness rose a step. There was no sound but the faint hum of machinery, but that proved little. Even the Goa'uld could be quiet, on occasion.

Colonel Carter was the first to reach the doorway, and with hand signals pronounced it clear. They moved in. Teal'c assisted her in securing the room while Daniel Jackson and Selmak approached the computer terminals. Once he was sure no immediate threat existed, he assessed their location more thoroughly. It appeared to be solely a computer room, and unless this base followed a different layout to the ones he was familiar with, they had already visited all the closest chambers big enough to house a large-scale engineering project. His apprehension grew.

"Is the code the Tok'ra agent gave you still valid?" Colonel Carter asked, from her position guarding one of the three possible entrances. Teal'c was forced to split his attention between the two others, although one was the one they had entered through. It was at moments like this he most keenly missed O'Neill. His companions were all worthy warriors and tacticians in their own right, but to none was it first priority. Their attention was split between their safety and the mission, and without O'Neill to take the position of protector that duty fell to Teal'c.

It was a heavy burden.

"Working on it, working on it... damn." Jacob Carter had reverted to his own voice to answer his daughter, and uttered a curse that was wholly Tauri in origin.

"Is that... what I think it is?" Daniel Jackson said warily.

"It is a detailed schematic for interfacing a piece of Ancient technology," Selmak confirmed, resuming control.

"What kind of technology?" Still covering her doorway, Colonel Carter backed toward the computer console to be able to briefly glance at it.

"Well, I'm no expert," Daniel Jackson said, tilting his head, "but it looks to me an awful lot like... an engine."

The unsettled feeling in Teal'c's belly grew to such an extent that it almost felt as though he had his symbiote back. "Baal is building a ship," he said grimly.

Jacob Carter raised his head, eyes troubled. "Baal has _built_ a ship," he said. "This is finished, Sammie. We've been set up."

"_Shol'va, kree_!" The harsh bark of a Goa'uld voice had Teal'c turning and firing his staff weapon in one smooth motion, though he already knew that it was not Baal.

The Goa'uld flinched - false god! - obviously not protected by a personal shield, but quickly recovered from the near miss, and raised a ribbon device to aim at the Tauri clustered by the computer. They dove for cover as the console went up in sparks.

"Teshram?" Daniel Jackson guessed dryly.

"That's our boy," Jacob Carter agreed, aiming and firing with his zat. The shot went wide; Colonel Carter's shots were truer, but the bullets failed to slow the Goa'uld down. Teal'c was unable to get a clear line of fire from his position, and retreated toward their original point of entrance.

Teshram delivered another blast with his ribbon device, narrowly missing Daniel Jackson, but the expected tramp of Jaffa - or even Kull warrior - feet did not materialise. Teshram's garrison was not just small, but apparently non-existent.

"I believe we are not the only ones who have been set up!" Teal'c observed, quickly taking cover.

"Makes sense," Colonel Carter said. She leaned around the console unit to squeeze off some more shots, forcing Teshram to temporarily back up. "Baal must have fed the Tok'ra spy outdated information. If this Teshram is famous for stabbing his allies in the back, it probably suits Baal to make use of his expertise and then get him out of the picture. He sends the Tok'ra here to destroy a piece of technology that's already been moved, it really doesn't matter who comes out on top - he still wins."

"And meanwhile, Baal is out there somewhere with a brand new ship powered by Ancient technology," Daniel Jackson said, wincing at another near miss.

"We've got to get this information back to the Tok'ra," Jacob Carter said.

"We've got to get word back to the SGC that Baal has a ship that may be capable of evading Earth's defences," his daughter added.

Teal'c stood momentarily to fire off a blast with his staff weapon. It missed Teshram, but at least caused the Goa'uld to duck for cover.

"Perhaps we should first concentrate on getting out of the base," he suggested mildly.

* * *

The curator of the Iaeronan Hall of History was quite delighted with the find of the shelter. Well, aspects of it, anyway.

"You see, when the Wraith come-" John tried to explain again.

"When the Wraith come, we scatter," the curator said cheerfully. "Like the hraka before the hunt. It is our way." He clapped his hands gleefully over the bowls and pieces of pottery the team had noted during their stay there.

The shelter itself, with all the phenomenal Ancient technology involved in hiding and maintaining it, was apparently only interesting to him on a level of 'hmm, nice architecture'.

"Yeah, the whole scattering thing. That's good, that's good," John said placatingly. "But still, with a shelter, you can... uh, shelter." He looked around. "It might get kinda cosy, but you could fit maybe twenty people down here; the village leaders, your children... The Wraith would never know they were here."

"If the Wraith did not know they were here, then how would they select from among them?"

"Well... that would be the point," he said, after a pause.

The curator smiled rather bemusedly. "We select from among the hraka, that they are prepared for the next Cycle," he said, in the tone of someone explaining elementary principles to a slow learner. "The Wraith select from among our people, that we are ready to embrace the next Cycle. If the Wraith do not choose, we are not prepared."

Nothing made your day quite like having things explained in small words by insane people. John opened his mouth to speak, but Teyla stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Your ways are very wise," she said, with a small bow of the head.

And hey, that was just how John had been about to describe them.

Well. He would have used a four-letter word, anyway.

"We are grateful for your gift of the crystals," she continued. Oh, yeah, that was right - the reason why they were doing the whole diplomacy in the face of idiocy thing. Swell. "We hope they will teach us much about our past."

"Yes, yes," the little man said cheerfully, his attention still on the discovered artefacts. "We must strive to learn about the past."

"As opposed to _from_ it," John muttered darkly, as he and Teyla made their way up from the shelter and struck out in the direction of the Stargate.

"Let us hope these crystals are sufficient to meet Doctor McKay's needs," Teyla said, checking them carefully to see they were undamaged. John had been glad that he'd chosen to leave McKay with Ford rather than put him through unnecessary marching when he'd seen the way the curator had carelessly swept the power sources into a bag like so many oversized marbles.

"Let's hope," he agreed.

The Iaeronans were, he guessed, nice folks. But that didn't mean he wanted to spend any more time on their planet than he had to.

* * *

Baal looked upon the fruits of his labours, and was well pleased.

The group of Tauri he had captured had proved... enlightening. It was as well their knowledge was of use to him, as their aspects were most displeasing. Even the female was disgracefully plain-looking. The Tauri at least appeared to have selected their premier team with an eye to aesthetic appeal, but it was appalling how far their standards had slipped by the sixth-ranked group in their hierarchy. No Goa'uld would accept followers of such substandard appearance.

Instead, the Tauri appeared to select their warriors on the basis of stubbornness, a trait that should have been bred out centuries ago by any right-thinking deity. However, the defiance of the group called SG-6 had been worthless in the face of his methods. He had learned all he needed to know from them as fast as they could babble it.

The warriors had told him much of the force he would face at his destination: their numbers, and their likely tactics. An exploration team only, no match for the might of his armies, but nonetheless, it pleased him to win his way in by cunning, stealth and guile.

The boy and the woman were more promising. The Tauri educated their underlings to a far better level than Jaffa or human slaves were allowed to achieve - foolish, but undeniably useful. The boy had been able to tell him much of the Tauri's understanding of the technology of the Ancients; primitive in comparison to his own, of course, but even the directionless tinkering of primitives could be useful, when Ancient devices were so rare that more advanced thinkers had yet to have a chance to encounter them.

It was from the female that he had pulled the most precious shred of knowledge of all. The existence of a gene - a marker that allowed certain humans to activate machinery just as the Ancients had done. He had long suspected that such a thing must exist, but his current host did not possess it, and nor did the humans of any world he had yet conquered. The fact that it was not wholly lost, but found among selected members of the Tauri, explained much about how such a young and ignorant race had prevailed against such unlikely odds.

It was amusing and galling in equal measure to learn that O'Neill himself was one of these genetically advanced mutants. Perhaps that accounted for his unfathomable good luck - an ability to manipulate technology far beyond what was apparent in his façade of stupidity.

If it was a façade. O'Neill's hidden skills were truly vast indeed if he could maintain such an act quite so constantly.

O'Neill, alas, would make a very poor host, although the idea provided long moments of enjoyable contemplation. It would be satisfying indeed to take him... but ultimately, he suspected, the cause of many unnecessary headaches. No mere host could defy the will of their controlling god, of course, but the most obstinate among them could maintain enough of a presence to make commentary. Even the delightful prospect of breaking O'Neill through the things he was forced to witness paled into insignificance against the idea of voluntarily sharing headspace with the man.

No, taking O'Neill as a host was an idea best kept for idle fantasy - or, better yet, passing on to some lesser Goa'uld so that they could deal with the headaches.

His own current host was so thoroughly broken in that he worshipped Baal as well as any of his other followers. It would be something of a pity to leave him... but of course, one had to keep up with advances in the breeding stock. He would do this host the honour of a quick and painless death in recognition of his centuries of faithful service.

The faint curl of love and gratitude that drifted up in response to that notion made him smile. Yes, it would be a shame indeed to trade this in for the uncomfortable early years of training a new host. But sacrifices had to be made, even by the gods.

With his new ship, he would travel to Atlantis, and enslave the population of gene-enhanced Tauri. There he would find his choice of new hosts, a city full of Ancient technology just waiting for him... and, perhaps, a whole new galaxy to conquer and do with as he wished.

After all, when one was a god, there was no need to start small.


	9. Chapter 9

** IX **

Jamie didn't like to leave Jon for any length of time, but no combination of shaking or shouting could wake him up. So far as Jamie's lack of medical knowledge could ascertain he was simply asleep rather than anything more dire, but there didn't seem any way to rouse him out of it.

The fact that he was quite definitely snoring, however, was pretty reassuring.

Jamie hoped it was just the energy expended in... doing whatever he'd done... that had switched him off like a toy with its battery pulled. Maybe he just needed to recharge for a little while.

Maybe he needed to eat.

Disconcertingly, Jamie's own stomach was growling, apparently unperturbed by the fact that it had until quite recently had a bullet hole in it. Or some part of his anatomy had, anyway. He didn't like to think about it too deeply. Or at all.

There was clearly something crazy weird about Jon, but he was still _Jon_. Whatever strange powers he did or did not have, he'd shown no particular inclination to take over the world with them. Except possibly those areas of the world containing _The Simpsons_ and fishing.

And, being Jon, it was entirely possible that the scent of fast food would wake him where all other methods had failed. What had seemed like a shadowy forest when Jamie was too busy dying to pay much attention turned out to be a scruffy clump of trees not far removed from civilisation. He could see the burger place from the edge of the trees. Surely he could get out there and back again before Jon awoke.

The disquieting suspicion that they might be being trailed by Hawkins' men, or whoever had raided their facility, or... somebody... didn't hold up well against the lure of French fries. And it wasn't like he could drive the van himself anyway.

A few minutes later, he'd blown every bit of cash left in his wallet, and was scoffing handfuls of too-hot fries on his way back to the van. He was too preoccupied with not dropping anything to notice that Jon had moved until he opened the passenger door.

"Supply run?" Jon said dryly from the driver's seat.

"Um, sort of," Jamie said, dropping the paper sack in his lap. "I got you, uh... whatever I haven't already eaten on the way back."

He was starving, and Jon appeared to be even more so, making him glad he'd bought so much food. Obviously healing bullet wounds with your magic superpowers took it out of you.

Yeah, that wasn't going to get any less insane the more he contemplated it.

He sat and watched Jon devour a burger in a way that could _only_ be the act of a sixteen-year-old boy... but still, he had to say something.

"So, what... are you?" he asked carefully, when Jon looked up quizzically.

"Aquarius. You?"

Jamie narrowed his eyes. "You _healed_ me."

Jon held his gaze for a moment, then sighed. "I'm... an experiment," he said finally. "A _failed_ one," he added, with some bitterness. "I can't tell you about it, okay? But basically, there's been some monkeying with my genetic code, and that's why those guys back there were interested in me."

"It's their experiments that are making you sick, isn't it?" Jamie realised. "That football thing, it was emitting radiation or whatever... they were trying to trigger off... what? What you did for me just now? What else can you do?"

"Just that." Jon shook his head, then rested his forehead on the heel of his palm. "I shouldn't _be_ able to do that. They've triggered something, all right." He thumped a hand against his thigh. "Only problem is, I don't know how to get it untriggered."

"You said something, before you passed out again," Jamie told him. "You were speaking that Latin stuff again, and then you said... Atlantis."

Jon's head snapped up just a fraction too fast for him to pretend it was meaningless babble. "What does that mean?" Jamie pressed.

Realisation of some sort was dawning in Jon's eyes, and he took a moment to answer. "It's... a codename," he said eventually. "For a project where there are some other guys like me. There might be a way to reverse this, but I need... something that they have there-"

He flinched and clutched his head, and Jamie reached out for him with alarm. A moment later, Jon untensed and waved his concern away. "It's okay. There's just... a lot of stuff in my head right now, and I don't completely have control of it. But now I know what I have to do."

He wiped his hands on his pants, then reached under the steering wheel to restart the hotwired van.

* * *

"Major Sheppard." Elizabeth smiled in relief as the last of the team appeared in the gate room and the wormhole shut off behind them. No matter how harmless a mission she'd sent her people on, she could never rest easy until they were home safe.

Especially these four.

They were all in one piece and none of them bleeding, which already made for a big check in the positive outcome column. Major Sheppard lifted an animal-hide bag that clinked, and gave her a disarming smile.

"You got the power crystals?" she said delightedly.

"Five of them. They're a little dusty, but they'll polish up good."

"Excellent." She activated the radio link. "Doctor Beckett. I believe Doctor Zelenka wanted you on hand to advise when he activated the Ancient medical scanner. We're just getting the power sources to him now."

"Aye, I'll be right down there."

Rodney looked irritated. "You realise there's absolutely no evidence that this is a medical device beyond Zelenka's wishful thinking? We're lucky he hasn't fried us all to a crisp - and now we have the power sources to actually get the machine activated he may have the opportunity yet. You can't possibly let him work on this without my supervision."

Elizabeth smiled at the predictable gambit. "You look tired, Rodney," she said. "Why don't you let Doctor Zelenka get the machine powered up, and you can both work on figuring out its purpose tomorrow?" In fact, he looked as if he was all but asleep on his feet, dark bruising shadows obvious under his eyes.

Rodney scowled dramatically. "I wouldn't trust Zelenka to wire up my car stereo. I saw the patch job he did on that console in the jumper bay, I'm surprised it didn't electrocute the first person who tried to use it. This is delicate work, Elizabeth, you can't just jam the crystals in willy-nilly and hope for the best."

"Willy-nilly?" Sheppard queried, raising an eyebrow. Elizabeth hid a smile.

"Anything else to report, Major?" she asked.

"Minor run-in with the Wraith," he supplied. "We didn't even see them, the locals had an early warning system in place." His expression darkened. "Early hiding, not so much."

"The Iaeronans believe the Wraith have the right to hunt them," Teyla explained. "They consider fighting back or going into hiding to be going against the natural order of things."

"We found an Ancient-built underground shelter and traded information about its location for the crystals," Ford said. "They were interested in it for the historical value, but they didn't seem to even consider the idea of protecting their people there."

"Well, we can't try to enforce our values on other societies," she said pragmatically, although she was sure Major Sheppard disagreed. "All we can do is give our best shot at offering help, it's up to them whether they take it."

"Yes, yes, this is all fascinating, cultural relativity in a brave new world," Rodney said dismissively. "If we were required to reeducate everyone less wise than ourselves I would never get anything done. Elizabeth." He nodded at her and strode toward the exit.

The first step was a stride. The second was more of a stagger. The third didn't happen at all, because he abruptly went the colour of curdled milk, and collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.

She was back on the radio before his teammates had reached his side. "Doctor Beckett?"

"I can only walk so fast and no faster, you know," he said peevishly, obviously on his way down to join Radek.

"Well, don't slow down. We need you back here in the gate room." She glanced across at Ford, who was taking Rodney's pulse. He'd obviously found one, but didn't look entirely happy with it. "It's Doctor McKay - he's just fainted."

* * *

The raid on Bradleigh Biotech had gone pretty much to plan. Somebody's plan, anyway, although Jack was fairly sure it wasn't his. _His_ plan had involved a lot more charging in at the head of the strike force instead of being carefully guarded toward the back like a good General should.

All attempts to point out that he wasn't a good General and never had been had fallen on deaf ears.

They'd captured a number of guys who looked like they only used their heads for smashing holes in things, a few of the 'I just work here, it's not my fault if they use my plans for weapons of mass destruction to build weapons of mass destruction' breed of scientists that he really _hated_, and a guy whose ID rather dubiously proclaimed him to be Andrew Hawkins.

Hawkins was Intelligence.

Oh, there were no visible ties between him and the NID, or their corporate sister organisation the Trust, but everything about him immediately pushed a button in Jack's brain.

Said button was labelled 'punch me', which made holding a useful interrogation session somewhat difficult. But since Hawkins was quite obviously content to smirk and make enigmatic statements until the end of time, Jack had few qualms about having the guy tossed in lock-up until he was in a more suitable frame of mind for dealing with him.

A couple of decades' time ought to be about right for that.

"Any luck?" He approached Siler, who alongside Bill Lee was providing the technical expertise on this mission. Good guys, some of the SGC's finest, but Jack still missed having Carter by his side. For many reasons, not least of which the fact that she laughed at his jokes. Siler took 'deadpan' to new levels of... deadness.

"We're almost in, sir," he said, fiddling with the controls on a... gadget of some sort. Jack _assumed_ it was for breaking through the suspiciously complex electronic lock that was barring their way into one of the labs, but really, it could have been making popcorn for all he knew.

Which reminded him; it was about time they took Teal'c out to see another movie. Admittedly, Teal'c was now fully capable of taking himself out to see movies - not to mention using his otherwise mostly unneeded salary to keep the local DVD rental places in business - but still, educating him in Earth culture was a legitimate diplomatic duty. And therefore Jack could get away with pencilling it into his calendar.

At least, until someone picked up on it.

"Sir?" Siler looked up at him. "If you'd like to step back please?"

He hurriedly hopped behind the nearest piece of cover. One thing you learned early on in the SGC was not to mess about when Siler warned you something might blow.

As it turned out, the lab doors didn't explode outwards, just slid silently open like they'd been planning to do that all along. Siler gave a very small satisfied nod, which Jack suspected was Siler for 'Woohoo!' Jack clapped him on the shoulder.

"Good work."

He made to enter the lab, but Reynolds cut in ahead of him, much to his annoyance. Reynolds had been doing that a lot. Jack knew it was respect for his position rather than contempt for his skills, but it still sucked. He hung back while the science team did their gadget-filled version of casing the joint, although only because he was pretty sure there'd be an embarrassing incident involving him being shoved out of the way if he followed before the room was pronounced clear.

Being the man _sucked_.

"Sir?" Reynolds discreetly invited him, and gestured to the bizarre contraption taking up floorspace. "It looks alien in origin, but the energy readings we're getting off it are negligible."

"Meaning it's not going to go boom?"

"Or it's particularly well-shielded, sir," Siler spoke up, always the happy-go-lucky voice of bright and sunny optimism.

Jack tilted his head sideways as he contemplated the device. "Looks like a disco ball on a stick."

It had that certain 'carved out of alien rock' vibe that always made Daniel wet himself with excitement. In this case, the rock was dark and shiny - almost black, except where a facet caught the light and showed blue. The 'disco ball' stood at just above waist height, supported by a column of the same stone a couple of inches thick. If it hadn't been for the amount of trouble they'd had getting in to see it, Jack might have suspected they'd found themselves some alien version of a traffic signal.

"Pretty," he said dryly. "What does it do?"

Doctor Lee rubbed his head. "Well, we're... not entirely sure yet," he conceded. "As I said, the energy readings are fairly faint, comparable to what you might see from a, um, some sort of kitchen appliance, but the regularity of the signal suggests that it might be an automated transmission of some sort. Not quite clear on the nature of the energy as yet, but it appears to be focused in a beam, which suggests the existence of a receiver of some sort-"

"Whoa, whoa." Jack held up a hand to stop the flow of geek. "_Transmitting_?"

Lee blinked at him for quite a while before it seemed to occur to him why there might be some sort of issue with that. "Oh! Uh, short distance transmission, I think. No more than a couple of miles at the very most with this kind of power output. Which is why I think there's probably a partner device around here somewhere. It's probably wholly automated - the device doesn't appear to have any obvious controls to shut it off or modulate the signal."

"What about _un_obvious controls?" he growled. He took a step closer, and the column lit up with bright blue lettering.

Doctor Lee did some more blinking. "Hmm. Well, that's interesting," he said, and immediately started going over the device with a something-ometer.

Jack was not the best in the universe at distinguishing one set of squiggles from another, but this particular blocky script was very familiar indeed. "Okay, that's Ancient." Which probably explained why it had lit up. Call him old-fashioned, but there was something creepy about alien machines that used the details of your genetic makeup to decide whether they liked you.

Especially because, when they liked _him_, they had a bad tendency to grab him by the head and shove unwanted crap in his brain.

"Can you read it?" Reynolds asked him. Jack gave him a long, hard stare, then made an elaborate pretence of examining his own clothing.

"Okay, did I accidentally swap clothes with Daniel in the locker room again?"

In truth, he _could_ read it, for a very limited definition of 'read'. After spending an unthinkable number of time loops helping Daniel translate and re-translate that inscription, not to mention twice having the knowledge of the Ancients downloaded to his brain and then erased again, he could sound out all the letters fairly effortlessly. Actually knowing what he was _saying_, aside from a few scattered words, was a different matter.

Where his knowledge was sketchy, he preferred to pretend it didn't exist at all. People had a disquieting habit of wanting to believe the best about their commanding officer, and if you let them think your grasp of a few big words meant you truly understood all the intricacies, someone was going to get killed.

"Doctor Lee?" Reynolds asked. The scientist grimaced apologetically.

"I took the Goa'uld class," he said. Jack briefly scared himself with the thought of Ancient and Goa'uld taught as high school language options, then looked across at Siler. Siler knew everything.

"Not in my job description, sirs," he said calmly.

Jack gestured at the... artefact, very careful not to touch it. "Can it be moved?"

"Technically? Yes," Lee said.

"Physically, we might need some mechanical assistance to lift it," Siler added.

"Okay, pack it up and get it back to the SGC, we'll have Doctor Jackson check out the lettering when he gets back, see if this thing comes with a quickstart guide." He stepped sideways to get out of the way of the door, and was suddenly weak at the knees. Not from the good old ACL problem, either - he was hit by a wave of dizziness that made his vision blur and his stomach lurch. He staggered back to his original position as the lights on the device all flared and flickered.

"Okay... what just happened here?" he asked, clutching his head. Reynolds hovered nervously.

"Interesting," Lee mused instead of answering him. "Oh, uh... something happened when you stepped through the energy stream."

Jack stared at him, and then at the device. "And there's no 'alien energy, do not cross' tape _why_?" he demanded.

"Oh, it's perfectly harmless," the scientist said cheerfully. "It's not radiating energy on a level that the human body can perceive or would be affected by. The signal must interact with the gene in some way... did you feel something when you passed through it?"

Jack was opening his mouth to describe, in great detail, exactly what he had felt and why he was pissed about it... but before he could begin, his vision started to grey out. His last coherent thought before he fell into unconsciousness was a very much aggrieved '_scientists!_'

* * *

Jamie dozed while Jon was driving. By the time he was jolted awake by the cessation of movement, he had no idea where they were. Jon tossed a cell phone into his lap.

"I'm going shopping. Call your parents."

Jamie blinked at him blearily. "...Shopping?"

"I need some stuff," Jon non-explained. "There's no way I'm getting you back home tonight, and I'm not sure it's safe to 'til we know what happened to Hawkins and his goons. Let your parents know you're going to be at my place - tell them I'm sick or something if you need to."

Jamie eyed the cell dubiously. "If they're still after us, won't they be able to... triangulate the signal or something?" He felt like a dork, spouting ideas he'd picked up from too many cop shows in front of somebody who obviously understood the real deal. Jon tilted his head noncommittally.

"Maybe," he allowed. "But I know a bit about evading pursuit if we have to. I know a bit about parents and missing kids, too. Make the call." He hopped out of the van and slammed the door.

Jamie fiddled with the phone. It was Jon's, he guessed, although he'd never seen it before. In a fit of curiosity he checked the address book, but there were no numbers programmed in. Whoever it was Jon called on it, he kept the numbers in his head.

Maybe he should use his own cell - after the night he'd had, Jamie wouldn't be surprised if he had trouble remembering his own home telephone number. He reached for it, but then aborted the movement. For all he knew, the one Jon had handed him had some super cool secured anti-tracking device doodad. Could you secure a cell phone?

Crap, he knew nothing at all about _any_ of this stuff. What was he doing here?

Jamie brushed his fingers over the bloody bullet hole in his T-shirt, almost invisible now in the darkened interior of the van. He was in way over his head, but he already had more proof than should be possible he could trust Jon with his life.

He made the call.

It was weird talking to his dad - like his father had somehow missed the memo about the world having transformed into something out of a sci-fi spy thriller. _Hey, son. Jon's house? Sure, whatever, don't stay up too late with your computer games, you know you've got school tomorrow._

Jamie wasn't at all sure he was going to make school tomorrow, and couldn't imagine what he would do if he actually got there.

He'd just had time to get antsy about Jon's absence when he returned, carrying several bags that looked to be stuffed with small boxes.

"Whatcha got there?"

"Stuff." Jon didn't elaborate but dumped the bags in Jamie's lap, so he had a chance to rifle through them as they drove off. He studied the revealed set of electronic gizmos with bemusement. An alarm clock, a calculator, some sort of universal TV remote, mains adaptors... the sort of random crap you might get if, say, you visited the only kind of stores that were open at this time of night and bought everything you could find that contained some kind of circuitry.

"What do you need all this for?"

"No idea," Jon grunted; not sarcastically, but with a kind of finality that cut off further avenues of conversation.

He drove them to a motel - or something like, Jamie was really too tired to care - and arranged for a room with twin beds. The guy at the desk raised an eyebrow, but didn't challenge it. Jamie was sure that if he'd been the one doing the asking, it would have been a different story. Jon just had a way about him that somehow rendered the fact that he _looked_ sixteen unimportant. Adults reacted to the aura of confidence instead of the face.

Jamie would have killed to have learned the trick behind it, but he doubted very much it could be taught.

He jerked his head back in the direction of the desk clerk as they moved away. "You realise he thinks we're here to have sex?" he said.

_That_ fazed Jon, where thugs, guns, speaking in tongues and super healing powers didn't. He made an alarmed noise somewhere in the region of "Nnng!" and Jamie had to snicker.

"Should've got separate rooms," he said.

"Nuh-uh." Jon frowned. "No splitting up." He went through some entertaining facial gymnastics before sighing. "Ah, well. At least we're not gonna be interrupted."

As soon as they got to their room, he pulled his funny little sci-fi stun gun out of his pocket and begin to take it apart. He kept some of the components, pushed away the others, and then opened up the first of his purchases to start disassembling that. Periodically he would lift things up to the light and study them, like a master craftsman looking for flaws in his materials.

"What are you trying to make?" Jamie asked him, stifling a yawn.

Jon shrugged, quick hands not pausing in their endeavours. "I don't know." He snapped a couple of pieces into place and frowned down at it. "But I know it goes together like _this_."

He kept building. Jamie watched for as long as he could, but the sheer weight of exhaustion soon forced him into sleep.


	10. Chapter 10

** X **

"Well?" John glared at Doctor Beckett impatiently as he insisted on finishing up all those annoying doctor-y things like taking his gloves off before giving them his report.

To his eyes, Beckett was looking distinctly guilty.

"It appears that the alien life-form you encountered on the mission before this one has set up an irritation in Rodney's lungs."

"How bad?" John instantly demanded the bottom line. The doctor sucked in a slow breath.

"Well, it seems to be under control," he said, and the tension level in the room dropped considerably. "It's not life-threatening, although it could have developed into something nasty if it went unchecked for much longer." He shook his head ruefully. "He came to see me twice and he seemed fine both times, I'm afraid I didn't take him very seriously."

Even though McKay was a member of his team, John couldn't really blame Beckett for that. If ever there was a candidate for 'the boy who cried respiratory infection'...

"Is it contagious?" Elizabeth asked, concerned for the rest of her people now that McKay had a diagnosis. The doctor shook his head again.

"Nobody else is showing any symptoms, not even the others who visited that planet. I can only assume it's down to his close contact with the organism."

"It did pretty much explode right in his face," Ford said.

Beckett sighed. "Aye, and I gave him a thorough check-up immediately afterwards and didn't find cause for concern. He complained of having had breathing difficulties but didn't show any sign of them during the exam."

"Then why is he having trouble now?" Ford asked.

"Well, it seems that pod's explosion when Rodney got too close may not have been accidental. It turns out the spores embedded in his lungs were very much alive and... growing."

The Lieutenant spoke for all of them with a heartfelt, "Ew."

"On a microscopic scale, of course," Beckett hastened to add. "But still enough to cause an irritation. We took samples of the spores from Rodney's clothing after the original incident, but they appeared to be completely dormant - until just now, when we tried altering the balance of oxygen to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."

"Like in exhaled breath," John said, for Teyla's benefit. Beckett nodded.

"It's a parasitic relationship. The pod explodes when a living creature moves too close, causing some of the spores to be inhaled. The conditions inside the lungs are ideal for it to grow: warmth, the right atmospheric balance, and moisture. You said the planet where you encountered the organism was like a rainforest?"

"Yeah. Sweaty," John confirmed.

That was why he hadn't worried when Rodney complained of being short of breath during the long trip back to the gate.

"Aye, that's what I thought. It's likely the efficiency of the air filtration inside Atlantis inhibited the growth of the organism, since the humidity is so much lower. He'd get short of breath if he visited one of the balconies, come rushing down here-"

"And by that time, be restored by the effect of the filtered air," Teyla completed, nodding.

"And then we went and took him off-planet." John grimaced.

"Well, there's no permanent harm done," Beckett hurried to reassure them. "We were able to kill off the spores in the sample by steadily increasing the level of oxygen. The stubborn little buggers inside Rodney's lungs are going to be harder to shift, but we should be able to root them out with repeated oxygen treatments. He's not contagious, but he'll need to be kept in an environment-controlled part of the infirmary until he's completely cleared of spores - if he's exposed to unfiltered air again, it could set the treatment back considerably. Bed rest is the best thing for him right now."

Elizabeth nodded. "See that he gets it. Doctor Zelenka can make a start on activating that scanning device while Rodney's recovering."

"Oh, boy, the doc's gonna _love_ that," Ford noted.

"Ten bucks says he'll be making his first escape attempt before the hour is out," John said.

Nobody was enough of a sucker to take that bet.

* * *

Daniel always thought Jack looked _wrong_ lying in one of the infirmary beds, which was pretty ridiculous when you considered the amount of time he spent in them. People made cracks about his own disaster-prone medical record, but the truth was Jack got beaten up more often than anyone bar Siler. He just had a knack for doing it in situations that earned descriptors like 'heroic', whereas Daniel's infirmary time tended to be accompanied by phrases like 'really unlucky', 'distracted by an interesting inscription' and 'why does every alien within ten billion light-years feel compelled to keep me as a pet?'

The horrible thing about Jack when he was unconscious was that he was so _still_. The only time Jack O'Neill went perfectly still was when somebody was about to get handed their ass. And possibly the asses of everyone else within a mile radius, too. Even in sleep he squirmed like a hyperactive five-year-old - although he never, _ever_ snored off-world. Daniel was not entirely clear on how he could silence himself completely when the enemy was near and yet sound like someone chainsawing a donkey when slumped on his couch after half a dozen beers, but that was Jack all over, really.

Jack could be many, many things, most of them contradictory, but common to all of them was the fact he was always in motion.

The infirmary had never been the vacation spot of the year, but now every time he walked in there the absence of Janet was like a stab to the heart. Daniel missed her desperately, and no amount of friendly familiar faces among the nurses could make it better. He detected a definite undercurrent of extra nervousness as they performed their checks tonight. Jack was a General now, and as such, supposed to be out of the firing line.

His old teammates, of course, knew better, and coming home to the news that Jack was once again unconscious for reasons unknown was not at all surprising.

Still enough to make Daniel's guts twist up the way they'd always done... but not surprising.

He was pulled out of his thoughts by a twitch from the still form beside him. A moment later, the eyelids cracked open, and a narrow slice of brown showed through. Jack's shoulders tensed and then relaxed. Even now, in this state, his first reaction was always the threat assessment. Daniel had no doubt that if his instincts had told him to get up and run, he would have leapt up and... well, at least lurched.

Jack licked his lips to wet them and spoke with a slightly raspy voice. "Carter? Teal'c?"

"No, and no. Just as well you get three guesses." Daniel smiled, but didn't draw the teasing out any further. "They're fine. So's Jacob. Baal wasn't even there, and neither was his project. We busted a minor Goa'uld called Teshram who was even more surprised to see us than we were to see him. Jacob's promised to get back to us as soon as the Tok'ra have finished decrypting what he could get from the computer files."

Jack nodded, relaxing further now that he knew his team were safe. Daniel could see that he was on the verge of slipping back into sleep, but nonetheless he struggled to sit up. "Did you bring pants? I'm a General, I can't bust out of this place with my ass hanging out."

"It's good to know you'd have had no hesitation if you were still a Colonel." Of course, likely to be true; military to the core, Jack had no discernible sense of modesty, and would probably think nothing of making a break for freedom butt naked if it won him a respite from the infirmary. Hell, Daniel himself would have considered it some days. It was tough to cling to his high school mentality of hiding behind a towel in a dark corner of the locker room after seven years of communal showering, unpleasantly thorough medicals, and weird alien ceremonies. The incredibly depressing ratio of people who'd seen him naked to people he'd actually had sex with was fairly high on his list of things best not contemplated.

"Pants, Daniel?" Jack raised an eyebrow imperiously.

"I should get a nurse," he said, standing up.

Jack countered with his best attempt at a wounded pout. "Aw, come on. You know they'll want to keep me in for the whole human pincushion routine. I just wanna sleep in my own bed for a change."

Daniel hesitated, almost swayed. It was certainly true that Jack didn't spend nearly enough time at home anymore. As a Colonel he'd never hesitated to seize every scrap of downtime owed to him - half the time, galactic circumstances conspired to stop him actually taking it, but still, the intent was there. Putting Jack in charge of the SGC had been a double-edged sword: he was unquestionably the best man for the job, utterly devoted to the men under his command, but that very devotion meant he might as well have been anchored to the base by a bungee cord. There was _always_ work on base that required the General's presence; it was just that General Hammond had possessed the level of objectivity that Jack - and, to be fair, the rest of SG-1 too - completely lacked, knowing when it was time to step back and call it a day.

Jack needed his rest all right. And if this had been any of the standard bumps, bruises and broken bones SG-1 collected on a regular basis, Daniel might have been willing to help him get it at home, but...

"They were picking up some unusual brain activity earlier," he warned. He'd glanced over photographs of the inscriptions on the device, but they would take time to piece together - whoever had taken them wasn't familiar enough with Ancient to spot the cues that would clarify what direction it should be read in. It would be quicker to wait until Siler brought the artefact in so he could study it in person.

"That's what they always say." Jack cracked a smile, which Daniel returned. After a moment he sighed. "Okay, fine. I'll sit through a check if it makes you feel better. _Then_ you can bring me my pants."

"Okay," Daniel conceded easily.

He loitered in the hallway while Jack was poked and prodded, taking comfort from the exasperated tone of his grumbles even though he was too far away to make out the words. He wasn't at all surprised, when he popped his head in a short while later, to find Jack curled up in a ball and gently snoring.

Daniel smiled, and crept away to his office.

* * *

The _Maltok'va_ Hawkins remained smugly silent in the face of questioning. Although Teal'c admired the strict honour code of his Tauri allies, there were times at which he found it... most confining. Hawkins was a man without honour, without bravery; his security was his belief that none would touch him.

Teal'c could rip that belief from him in seconds, have him babble the details of every plot that had crossed his small and venal mind... but he would not.

O'Neill would condone it in a heartbeat to save any life but his own - and insist on taking all such action himself, in defiance of the fact that Teal'c's hands were stained with far more blood than his own had ever known. Daniel Jackson would never condone it and Colonel Carter only with extreme reluctance, but both would readily forgive should Teal'c choose to take action on his own initiative. It was the knowledge of that forgiveness ready and waiting for him that prevented him from acting.

Honour among the Tauri was a complicated business. The Goa'uld would not understand it, could literally never conceive of it. Yet the Tauri culture was so steeped in such complex values that they could look upon a work of great spiritual depth like the movie _Star Wars_, and laugh off its lessons as things learned a thousand times over from earliest childhood. His friends and allies were truly quite wondrous beings.

And yet, in many ways, remarkably predictable.

He found Colonel Carter in her laboratory, studying the plans her father had procured for them from the computers at the facility on Kelshan. The codes provided by the Tok'ra had been enough to give them access to the original technical information retrieved from P2C-491, as the Goa'uld had not been able to encrypt the language of the Ancients as thoroughly as they did their own. The notes of the Goa'uld scientists would take much longer to decipher, and it was this task Jacob Carter had returned to the Tok'ra to attempt.

Colonel Carter could read neither Ancient nor Goa'uld, but her innate understanding of machines allowed her to achieve a great deal by, as O'Neill would refer to it, "looking at the pictures".

Teal'c worried at times that long-term exposure to O'Neill was warping his thought process in ways the Jaffa mind was ill-equipped to deal with.

Colonel Carter looked up from her work, and gave him a sunny smile. "Hey, Teal'c." The expression dimmed as she recollected O'Neill's current circumstances. "How'd the interrogation go?"

"The operative Hawkins is being..." He contemplated an appropriate translation for _Mik'shok_, and deemed it unsuitable for present company. "...Unhelpful."

She nodded. "I spoke to Colonel Reynolds. Aside from the artefact that affected General O'Neill - which is down in their records as being from an archaeological dig in Wales, and for all we know really could be - there was nothing in the building that could tie these guys to the Trust, the rogue NID, or even any legitimate company associated with our offworld interests. Siler's attempting to retrieve any information that might have been scrubbed from the computer network, but it's unlikely that he'll find anything. These guys know what they're doing."

"What of the computer program you and Daniel Jackson discovered at Mountain Springs High School?"

Colonel Carter contorted her lower lip in a grimace. "Siler triggered a self-destruct instruction when he was trying to prevent the program sending out a warning signal. We don't have enough left to prove anything, and even if we could, it's not enough to make Hawkins break a sweat. The program's not much more than a highly sophisticated tracking cookie, and we can't admit we know it was specifically targeted at Jon without drawing attention to him."

"Do you believe they are aware that the boy Jon O'Neill is an Asgard clone?" he asked.

Colonel Carter sighed. "I don't know. But they certainly must have been aware he was connected to our O'Neill - even if they thought he was just a relative, he may have been targeted in the hope that he had the ATA gene."

"Then the device O'Neill triggered may have been intended for use on his clone."

She nodded, looking pained. "Daniel said the General seemed normal when he woke up, but the EEG picked up unusual brain activity. We have no way of knowing what the energy field may have done to him. Despite the discovery of the ATA gene, we're still not really any closer to understanding how Ancient technology interfaces with the human brain, and the General has had by far the most exposure to it thanks to his experience with the knowledge repositories on P3R-272 and P3X-439. Our study of the DHD network has taught us a lot about how Ancient technology is put together and how to use it, but that still doesn't mean we're anywhere near comprehending how it _works_. Most of their devices are light years ahead of every race we've met bar the Asgard."

Teal'c nodded soberly. "And that is why it is very bad news that such technology may have fallen into the hands of Baal."

They both studied the engine schematic on Colonel Carter's computer screen. If Baal had truly succeeded in interfacing such a drive with one of his ships, then that gave him a technological advantage that he would surely use to devastating effect.

* * *

It was the sun spilling into the motel room from an unfamiliar direction that eventually woke Jamie up.

Well, woke him, anyway. The 'up' part proved significantly more difficult, as did unglueing his disgustingly gummy eyes. He felt like he'd spent the night stuck to the bottom of somebody's shoe.

An irritating clicking noise eventually forced him to give up on going back to sleep. He sat up to find Jon perched on the end of the other bed, swinging his legs and playing with a gadget about the size of a toaster. It looked... well, it looked like what it almost certainly was, some sort of unholy hybrid of a dismantled appliances and duct tape, but it had a strange kind of functional attractiveness. It exuded the impression that it might not be obvious _why_ that part had been stuck there, but you'd better believe it was exactly the right place for it.

It looked like a device that should _do_ something, even if Jamie didn't have the tiniest clue what.

"You finished it," he said.

"Uh-huh." Jon continued to play with several switches on the side of the thing, clicking them in and out... and in... and out... and in... and-

Jamie squeezed the bedcovers very tightly in his fists, and reminded himself that any attempt to cause physical violence to Jon was probably doomed to failure. And also that throwing a pillow at him might damage the... toaster.

"So, um - do you know what it is yet?"

Jon gave an enigmatic smile. "Oh, I have a hunch."

He tilted the thing toward Jamie, so that he could see a small display screen, by the looks of things cannibalised from his cell phone. The clicking, it turned out, was Jon painstakingly cycling through combinations of pixels until they formed the shape that he wanted.

"You couldn't put a keyboard on this thing?" Jamie wondered, and Jon gave him a faint shrug.

It took him a long time to finish, but when he was done he had drawn a strange little symbol, like a letter A missing the cross-bar with a circle above it, followed by four capital letters: T H O R.

Jamie raised an eyebrow. "You're calling on the Norse god of thunder for help?" he said dryly.

"Oh, this guy's not exactly a _god_, but..." Jon smiled, "close enough." He adjusted several other buttons and levers on the side of the thing, and finally set it down, apparently satisfied.

"That's a codename?" Jamie guessed. "And that thing is sending him a signal." He felt a chill, remembering exactly how close he'd come to death by bullet wound last night. "What happens if the bad guys pick it up?"

Jon shook his head, unfazed. "Not _this_ signal," he said, not quite smug, but rather grimly satisfied.

Jamie had trusted him this far - he could trust him still further. He lay back on the bed, lacing his fingers behind his head. "What happens if your buddy doesn't answer?"

"Trust me," said Jon. "This will get his attention." There was a metallic jangling sound as he tossed something up in the air and caught it again. Hopefully not the techno-toaster that was sending out the Bat Signal, although Jamie wouldn't entirely put it past him.

More codenames and strange technologies. Jamie was insanely curious about Jon's past, but didn't really feel he had the right to ask him. After all, he'd kind of invited himself along on this jaunt, and contributed nothing to it apart from getting shot and almost dying and okay, possibly a little moral support if you were charitable about it.

"So, this Thor is connected to the Atlantis project?" he guessed aloud.

Jon gave a slight grunt that could have been 'yes', 'no', or 'give it a rest'. Jamie shook his head.

"You guys really need to get your mythology straightened out," he advised.

Jon let out a faint huff of amusement. "I've been saying that for years."

There was a brief pause that stretched out into a longer one.

"So, uh... what do we do now?" Jamie asked eventually.

"We wait."

"Until...?"

"Something happens."

"Ah."

Jamie pulled the pillow over his head in an attempt to snatch more sleep, and fought the urge to scream as Jon started tapping his fingers on the bed frame.


	11. Chapter 11

** XI **

Ted had made a lot of decisions in his teaching career that he'd second-guessed. Futures could be made or destroyed in the classroom, and those stomach-churning occasions when decisions had to be made about interfering in a student's home life were even worse.

But none of that quite compared to the matter of Jon O'Neill.

It had seemed simple enough - a casual call to an old friend, asking if he could check out some margin scribblings when he had time. Ted was curious as to whether Jon really had just doodled something he'd seen on a TV show, or if the equations might betray a hidden deeper interest in the subject. Lord knew it wouldn't have been the first time he'd met a teenage boy who would almost prefer to admit to cross-dressing than to reading science journals in his spare time. It was the boys who didn't _look_ like obvious geeks who fought their talents hardest - the others had been at the bottom of the high school pecking order long enough that compromising their social standing was the least of their worries.

Not that Jon had ever shown the slightest sign of caring about his popularity. Ted was beginning to suspect that he'd had much bigger things to worry about.

Who the hell was he, and what did he know that had the United States Air Force - the _Air Force_, for God's sake - tied up in knots?

He couldn't help but feel that Jon's disappearance the day after he'd pulled the boy aside to ask about those equations could not be a coincidence. The question was, had Jon fled under his own power, or had Ted's thoughtless phone call set something terrible in motion?

The two people he'd spoken to, Carter and Jackson, had seemed like friendly, young professionals, just trying to pin down a security leak with minimum hassle for all concerned. In a way, that was even more unnerving than if they'd been overtly threatening. It was a smooth and polished performance, as if tracking down teenagers over astrophysics-based national security issues was something they did every day.

Ted certainly didn't feel any more reassured when he turned up to work the next day to find them waiting for him in his office, accompanied by two of the most intimidating men he'd ever seen.

The big guy was, well, big. Roll-you-up-in-a-ball-and-play-basketball-with-you big. He had the serene, quiet dignity of someone who could drift through life in the sure knowledge that anyone who got in his way would soon be very sorry about it.

But it was the other one that Ted's nervous gaze was repeatedly drawn back to. He was only a few inches shorter than the big guy, and while he wasn't as visibly built as his impassive friend or even the pleasantly smiling Jackson, he had a kind of hard-muscled grace that suggested he could move _very_ fast when it suited him. Ted had enough years under his own belt to recognise that anyone with hair that was grey verging on white should not be able to wear baggy pants, a yellow shirt, and sunglasses indoors without looking ridiculous. This was a dangerous man.

And there was something naggingly familiar about him.

"Mr Rasmussen." Colonel Carter's megawatt smile hadn't dimmed despite her more intimidating escort. Being only human, and not used to that kind of thing even before he'd developed the belly and the bald spot, Ted smiled back.

"Colonel. Doctor." His gaze flickered over to their two associates, but no introductions were given. "Did you find Jonathan?"

"The investigation's still ongoing," Jackson told him, if 'told' was an appropriate verb for such a non-answer.

"I hope he's not in any trouble," he said, eyeing the two 'bodyguards' again.

"Oh... that depends on what he has to say for himself when we catch up with him." Mr Grey Hair spoke up for the first time, and pulled off his dark glasses.

And Ted realised he was staring into the face of the future. More specifically, the future of one Jon O'Neill in about four decades' time.

It took him a moment to stammer back to life. "Uh, you're his-" he bit down on 'father' just in time, remembering Jon's orphaned status, "...uncle?"

"Cousin," the man corrected, nodding to himself. Then he pulled a dissatisfied face and let it smooth out again. "Removed," he added. "Or... the other thing. Daniel?" He swivelled round.

Jackson blinked at being addressed. "Um. Well, he's your... uncle's grandson? So that makes you his-"

"Grandfather's nephew," O'Neill overrode him, smiling in smug satisfaction at having arrived at a term he was happy with. Jon's goofy mannerisms, endearing in a teenager even when they were interrupting class, were somewhat disconcerting coming from a man whose age and bearing otherwise pushed all Ted's ingrained 'stand up straight and show respect' buttons.

Jackson looked mildly irked at being cut off, but recovered his smile quickly. "General O'Neill is... Jonathan's closest surviving relative," he explained. "So obviously, we're very keen to get all this straightened out."

Jon's whole family wiped out, right up to the grandparents? Christ.

..._General?_

Christ. Ted was torn between wishing he'd bothered to shine his shoes this morning, and wondering what the hell the US Air Force was smoking these days.

"What's all this about?" he asked plaintively. This was all too much for him, especially before he'd had his traditional fortifying cup of pre-school coffee.

If he'd been able to read the language of the rapid sequence of looks that passed around, he would have picked up enough information to write a book. Somewhere in the middle of it, Colonel Carter was clearly tagged to do the talking.

"Jon is... part of a Air Force scheme not dissimilar to witness protection," she explained. "His parents were involved in research for a highly classified project that has an impact on national security."

"But how did Jon get mixed up in it?" he asked. Astrophysics wasn't exactly something you could pick up from an accidental glance or two.

"Er, we think his parents may have had him memorise some key information prior to their deaths," Jackson chimed in. "They had reason to suspect that someone was out to destroy their research, and they didn't know who outside the family they could trust."

"Oh, God, you mean they were murdered?" Ted clutched the edge of his desk.

"Jon's... been through a lot," Jackson hedged, which pretty much confirmed it for him.

"More than you can possibly guess," O'Neill added, with a strange expression.

"We're not looking to punish him," Carter spoke up. "We just want to talk to him about the security breach and find out why it happened."

"Yeah. Just a little talk," said O'Neill, with a shark-like grin that was not remotely reassuring.

"And I'm afraid we're going to have to ask you to hand over any copies you have of the papers you faxed Doctor Visnadi," she added.

"It hasn't been graded yet," Ted protested weakly as he headed for the stack of homework assignments.

"Oh... well, I'm sure Jon will be happy to make the work up." Jackson exchanged glances with his colleagues, and smiled.

But, as Ted handed over the work and ushered them out of his office with some relief, he couldn't help suspect that Jon O'Neill would never set foot in his classroom again.

* * *

"Well, he doesn't know anything," Daniel observed, tucking his hands into his pockets as they left the school building.

"Or he's a very good actor," Sam put in. Daniel pursed his lips thoughtfully for a beat.

"He doesn't know anything," they wryly chorused together.

"Kids. In the back." Jack jerked a thumb at them. He'd managed to commandeer the passenger seat from the get-go, citing the privileges of age, rank, and longer legs. Teal'c, of course, was driving.

"We set Jon up with his own apartment?" Daniel asked. He knew was probably bad to get in the habit of referring to the young Jack by his assumed name, disassociating him from the true identity he had just as much a right to as his older counterpart, but it did make the conversation less cumbersome.

"You think, what, we should have given him _minders_?" Jack imbued the word with, well, exactly as much disgust as his clone would have held for it, considering they were almost the same person.

Only 'almost', because in the year that had passed, their experiences had diverged. More than that, their _bodies_ had diverged. Take an adult man, and place him in the body of his fifteen-year-old self - did he _become_ fifteen? Did he think and feel exactly as he would if he were still an adult, or did hormones and the physical structure of the brain make him an emotional teenager? Did he get crushes on girls his age, or women more appropriate to 'his age' - and did either way feel disturbing to him, or did instinct and biology make it natural? _Was_ instinct biology? Did Jack's new body possess reflexes it had never been trained to, or was even a simple task like catching a ball something to relearn now that all the dimensions had changed?

It was a fascinating window into the secrets of human identity. But Daniel doubted either version of Jack would see it that way.

"We should have made more of an effort to keep in contact with him," Sam said, obviously feeling guilty. Daniel could sympathise.

Maybe the reason they were all so eager to assign the clone his own identity was because that meant it wasn't _Jack_ they'd shoved into an ill-fitting high school lifestyle and abandoned to get on with it.

"No. We shouldn't," Jack said shortly. Daniel understood that, too. He was an old hand at leaving places behind at short notice, and he knew the temptation to keep contact was the worst way to keep opening old wounds. All Jack's clone would have got from well-meaning efforts to reach out to him was a constant reminder of who he wasn't.

Unfortunately, while they'd elected to leave Jon alone, that didn't mean everyone else had. Daniel reached for his translation notes and went over them again.

"Are those the inscriptions from the device we retrieved from Bradleigh Biotech?" Sam asked him.

He nodded absently. "Yes. It's... tough to translate accurately, the language is..." he wrinkled his forehead, "a little unusual. Very poetic, even for the Ancients. I hesitate to try and make any kind of conclusion on the basis of such a rough translation, but it seems to be- well, it could be some kind of-"

"It's a lava lamp." Jack bluntly reaffirmed his original reaction.

Daniel had to reluctantly concede that he almost had a point. "It, uh, it does appear that it's a therapeutic device of some sort, intended to stimulate the mental processes in some way. Like a, a meditation aid or... some kind of child-development scheme."

"I got zapped by the alien equivalent of a musical mobile?" Jack demanded.

"Er... broadly speaking," Daniel allowed. "From what I can gather, there should be a second component to the device; what we have would be used by the parent - or, or teacher, or doctor - to set the, um, the learning program that would play on the second device."

"Master and slave," said Sam, nodding. Daniel frowned.

"Um, there's no evidence the Ancients ever-"

She cut him off with a warm smile. "Computer terminology, Daniel. A master-slave network has a single computer acting as a server that distributes information to all the client terminals - as opposed to the peer-to-peer model, where any station can send or receive requests for services. As near as we can tell, the data stream from the device is unidirectional, which suggests a host-based or master-slave setup."

Hosts, masters, slaves... was it him, or did all this computer terminology sound disturbingly Goa'uldish?

"So there's a second part to this gizmo out there?" Jack, as usual, mentally strip-mined their discussion for practical implications and ignored almost all of the rest.

"We think so, sir."

"Then where is it?" he demanded.

"Here, possibly," Daniel said, as Teal'c pulled up outside Jon's apartment block.

"Here?"

Sam rejoined them around the other side of the car. "Well, insofar as we can guess at the organisation's motives, it seems likely that they were attempting to use the device to, uh... stimulate-" she grimaced even as she said it, "your clone."

Jack raised a finger... then just let it float there for a while. "Not gonna touch that, Carter," he decided eventually.

"Thank you, sir," she said, with feeling.

"What were they hoping to gain from it? Their own real live captive Ancient?" Daniel made a face as he provided his own answer.

"Hey, he's no more an Ancient than I am," Jack reminded them.

"Perhaps he is now," Teal'c said gravely.

"Even your brief exposure to the particle stream caused unconsciousness and increased brain activity," Sam said. "And to be honest, sir, we really don't know yet what the long-term effects might be."

Jack wrinkled his nose. "That's reassuring."

"The odds are that your clone has been subjected to a considerably longer exposure. It's possible that the slave device converts the energy into a less harmful form, but still, your own bad reaction shows that this technology was never intended for use on somebody who possesses the ATA gene without being a full Ancient. If the device is attempting to 'repair' his mental condition to the standards that would be considered normal for an Ancient... there's no telling what it might do to him."

"It's P3R-272 all over again," Daniel said soberly.

Jack raised an eyebrow. "P3R... 90210... being?"

Daniel made a vague gesture toward his head. "Ancient head-sucker thingy."

"Ah."

Jon's apartment was a bust. Come to think of it, Daniel was beginning to wonder why they ever bothered doing these kind of searches, since they inevitably turned up nothing but the fact that someone else had been there before them.

"Is there a special secret organisation maid service somewhere?" he asked Sam. "Cleaning, tidying, removal of incriminating evidence..."

Jack's cell phone chirped, and he wandered a little distance away to answer it. Daniel flipped through a copy of _The Complete Works of Shakespeare_ that had been left on Jon's coffee table. No annotations, although there was a doodle of a bumblebee on page 57. Rather endearingly, it had been outfitted with a speech bubble that read 'Bzzz bzzz'.

Jack flipped his phone closed and rejoined them. "That was Walter. He says we've had a message through from our Swedish allies."

Glances were exchanged. Conclusions were not reached, unless 'Why yes, I do believe Jack _is_ insane,' counted, and nobody could call that news.

"Uh..." Daniel began. Jack's eyebrows lowered impatiently.

"It's phone code. Unsecured line, Daniel! Swedish, Norse... _Asgard_?"

Before he could form a response to that typical piece of Jack-logic, there was a familiar white flash, and they were beamed out of the apartment.

* * *

John could _feel_ that the scanner device had been switched on long before he got anywhere near it. The humming that floated out of the patterned crystal door, however, was not coming from the machine but from the Czechoslovakian scientist sat on the floor, cheerfully murdering symphonies while he checked readings.

"Going well?" John drawled as he walked in.

The pillar thing in the centre of the floor was now lit up, blue bars flickering up and down the sides like the lights on a stereo. Instead of the original six power crystals there were now nine, the extra three hooked up in a complicated arrangement that involved a lot of wires, clips, and duct tape. The cracked one had been removed to one of the worktops, and now had a note taped to it that said: 'Do not throw. Does not bounce.' John made a mental note to find out which marines had been given the duty of carrying Zelenka's equipment for him.

"The device is now operational," he confirmed. "How is Doctor McKay?"

John contemplated for a moment, in order to deliver _le mot juste_. "...Argumentative."

"Ah."

As they both knew, a cranky McKay was a healthy McKay. It was when he became suspiciously subdued and well-behaved that you started to worry.

He waved a finger at the alien pillar. "So... what does it do?"

Zelenka rubbed his head - looking decidedly fluffy after hours of crawling about in restricted spaces - and considered. "It lights up panels here, here, and here, displays a message that I cannot yet read, and vibrates at a frequency of- Hmm." He paused to consult one of the connected instruments, found it wasn't the one he wanted, and leaned over to reach another.

"Okay, let me rephrase that," John said. "What is it _for_?"

Zelenka grinned. "Ah. You are after the _technical_ version." He paused briefly. "That... may take some time."

* * *

The vessel they had been transported aboard was clearly Asgard in design. Nonetheless, Teal'c did not relax until he saw O'Neill do so.

"Hey, Thor." He raised a hand to shoulder height in a little wave.

Even Teal'c, whose experience with tracking had taught him greater observation skills than most Tauri, had great difficulty telling one Asgard from another before they spoke. However, even on those rare occasions SG-1 encountered several of the race together, O'Neill seemed to have no difficulty picking out his friend.

His teammates, and many others at the SGC, had often remarked in wonder at the rapport O'Neill had struck with such a lofty representative of a race so alien, where the greatest of diplomats would have feared to even try. Teal'c kept his own counsel. Warrior souls called to one another, and no boundary of race could stand between them. His time among the Tauri had taught him that there were more routes to close kinship than the Jaffa acknowledged, but the one he had known longest was the most universal.

The burden of battles lost and hard won was always visible in the eyes of those who carried it. Teal'c had seen it in O'Neill on Chulak, and known in that instant that while hundreds had stood before him and made claims even more grandiose, here at last was a man who knew the weight of what he offered and still offered it.

He had no doubt Thor had seen the same in O'Neill's eyes, and realised that the Tauri were not so young and foolish as the Asgard had believed.

"O'Neill." Thor bowed his head respectfully.

"It couldn't wait 'til we got back to the Batcave?" O'Neill asked, spreading his hands.

Teal'c had, through the convenience of DVD rental, familiarised himself with the mythology of the warrior known as Batman, but Thor was doubtless uncertain to what O'Neill referred. Wisely, however, he merely blinked and continued.

"I was summoned to your planet by a signal indicating some urgency."

"Summoned? Who by?" Daniel Jackson stepped forward. Thor tilted his head.

"If you are unaware of the origin of the signal, then I am equally uncertain."

He touched a control, and a simple repeating pattern appeared on the nearest screen. The letters T, H, O, R, followed by the Tauri gate symbol cycled across the display again and again.

"The alphabet of the Tauri," Teal'c observed.

"Yeah, we kind of got that, Teal'c," O'Neill said, scratching his neck. Teal'c did not take offence.

"Who apart from us would know to signal the Supreme Commander of the Asgard Fleet by name?" Daniel Jackson wondered.

"Thor, how did you pick this message up?" Colonel Carter asked. "Any method of communication used on Earth would take thousands of years to reach even the closest Asgard-controlled world."

O'Neill cocked his head. "Taking yourself a little vacation in Tauri space?" He slipped his hands into his pockets and briefly rose up on his toes. "You know, that fishing invitation still stands. I got this cabin, miles from anywhere..."

"I do not believe it would be wise to subject the Asgard to the creatures you call 'mosquitoes'," Teal'c interjected. His old team leader displayed a look of affected hurt that Rya'c would not have thought to get away with as a small child.

"The method by which the signal was transmitted was of great interest to us." Thor moved his hand, and the display switched to a chart, perhaps of frequencies. Colonel Carter could not have read the Asgard notation, but stepped forward to study it nonetheless. "It shares traits with communication technologies used by the Ancients."

All of them looked to O'Neill. He looked back.

"Hey, what?" He shrugged innocently.

"Sir, do you remember what you were thinking when you activated the device yesterday night?" Colonel Carter enquired.

"Yeah, I was thinking 'Ow,' and 'I should know better than to let these guys tell me the technology's safe'."

"Nothing about the Asgard?" Daniel Jackson pressed.

"Not at the time, no."

"O'Neill, you have had further contact with Ancient technology?" Teal'c was unable to ascertain whether Thor was merely interested, or concerned.

O'Neill scrubbed a hand through his hair. "A little zap... I'm fine." The tense set of his features would seem to belie that conclusion, but it was doubtful an Asgard could read human body language well enough to discern the presence of a headache. "Can you pinpoint the origin of the signal, Thor?"

The Asgard nodded. "It is coming from a region only a short distance south of here."

That was puzzling to them all. "Within Colorado?" Daniel Jackson raised his eyebrows.

"Perhaps it is an accomplice of the conspirators we captured," Teal'c suggested.

"In that case-" O'Neill reached for his concealed weapon, and Teal'c drew his own zat'nikatel, regretful that his staff weapon was unsuitable to carry while on Earth, "-beam 'em up."


	12. Chapter 12

** XII **

On moment, Jamie was lounging on his bed in the motel room, futilely trying to regain sleep. The next he was... highly confused.

There was a flare of white light, and then he guessed he must have passed out or something, because the ceiling he was looking up at now didn't belong in any motel. It was... shiny - very shiny - and... weird. Sort of like one of those ultra-modern stainless steel kitchens, only really, really, not.

He started to sit up. Into his vision loomed Jon, the two suspicious government types who'd visited the school, a big angry guy with a handgun, an even _bigger_ guy wielding one of the stun gun things, and-

"_Holy_\- sugared pancakes." The ability to swear like a grown-up temporarily deserted him in the face of- of...

It _looked_ like an alien. An honest to God, straight out of _The X-files_, big-eyed, skinny-bodied Roswell Grey. Standing at the console of its... oh, yes, that was right, this would be its spaceship...

If he hadn't passed out before, Jamie was giving serious consideration to doing it now.

Beside him, Jon lazily climbed to his feet as if little grey men and deadly weapons were nothing to get excited about. He raised a hand in greeting. "Hey, guys." He turned to the alien. "Thor? Do we need to have another talk about that 'classified' thing...?"

The grey-haired guy with the handgun lowered it and scowled. "Yeah. About that."

Something in his voice... Jamie tore his eyes off the Grey long enough to give him a second look - and then a double take. Never mind the voice, the _face_. Subtract three or four decades, a few inches and some muscle...

"Is that your dad?" he blurted to Jon.

The absolutely identical expressions of disgust this prompted made for decidedly mixed signals.

"There are not enough words for 'no'," the middle-aged Doppelgänger said, with a hand gesture that was totally Jon's.

"He's... a relative," Jon explained, grimacing.

"Distant," said the older O'Neill.

"Very distant." They both nodded, and exchanged a dubious look. The duo who'd come looking for Jon at the school appeared to have relaxed, and both looked amused. The big guy... Well, he had a thing going on with his eyebrow that could mean amusement, disdain, or homicidal tendencies. It was almost easier to read the alien.

Jamie looked at the alien. Disconcertingly, it looked back, blinking slightly. It occurred to him only now that he hadn't for a heartbeat assumed it wasn't real. There were a billion subconscious cues that the cleverest tricks of computer graphics and animatronics couldn't have put out, in its movement, the texture of its skin, even the smell. Not that it _did_ smell. But the way it didn't smell was somehow conspicuously different from the way that things on Earth didn't smell. It was unquestionably a living being, and not the product of creative human bioengineering, either.

"Who is your associate, young O'Neill?" it asked in a melodic voice.

All attention transferred to Jamie. He risked a tentative wave. "Hi."

Jon jerked a thumb at him. "This is Jamie. I..." he grimaced, "kinda kidnapped him."

Jamie opened his mouth to protest that, but the fierce scowl from the older O'Neill deterred him even though it wasn't pointed his way. "Okay," the man began, poking Jon in the shoulder.

He never got any further. At the instant of contact, both O'Neills reeled away from each other as if they'd been shocked. The adult one groaned and staggered, clutching his head, while Jon went white and folded up like a puppet with its strings cut. He hit the deck and lay sprawled, completely still.

The blonde woman ran forward to check his pulse with practised efficiency, while the guy in glasses steadied the older O'Neill. The big dude stayed out of their way, watching everybody at once - especially Jamie. He resisted the urge to put his hands up.

"He's unconscious," the woman reported, looking up. "Pulse is steady, but he's burning up."

"Jack?" Glasses-guy looked worried, but the older O'Neill waved him away.

"Ow. Static shock," he explained, shaking his hand.

"I don't think so, sir." The woman glanced across at him. "It may be that your..." her gaze flickered to Jamie... "cousin has been exposed to the same... technology you were, and it somehow caused an interaction."

Gee, that didn't sound like it was edited for his ears at all.

"Smooth, Carter." O'Neill clearly agreed with his assessment.

The alien spoke up. "I will convey him to the medical area and attempt to determine the cause of his condition." A second later, Jamie almost swallowed his tongue as Jon's prone form disappeared in a burst of white light.

"You should get checked out too, sir," Carter advised.

"Yes, Jack, after what happened yesterday..." Glasses Guy trailed off meaningfully.

O'Neill was clearly not happy about it, but acquiesced. "I'm fine," he grumbled half-heartedly.

"What of the other boy?" Mr Big asked, in a voice that matched his stature.

All eyes turned to Jamie. He tried to look non-threatening.

"Beam him back to the base until we've got time to debrief him," O'Neill decided. "Teal'c, you go with him."

Before Jamie could protest the plan, O'Neill and the other two disappeared in a similar blaze of white.

Jamie looked up at... Teal'c. Contemplated arguing. Didn't. Another flash of light, and he was suddenly standing in a hallway, surrounded by a whole lot of extremely agitated people with guns.

He couldn't help but notice the last few days of his life had developed a troubling theme.

Jamie put his hands up.

* * *

Elizabeth hid her smile inside a sip of Athosian tea. Governing a colony composed largely of scientists might make brokering the most complex international treaty seem like child's play - quite a lot like child's play, actually, given that it involved persuading stubborn, spoiled little monsters to stop pulling each others' hair and share their toys - but they were certainly a lot more fun to watch when they were excited. If Doctor Zelenka bounced up and down any harder, he'd be in danger of dislodging his own precariously balanced wiring.

"It is as I suspected," he was saying, hands working frantically as if he were accompanying himself in sign-language. "The device is some kind of scanner. It looks at internal workings with some kind of radiation that... we do not quite understand, but is very exciting."

"Is it safe?" Her people's protection always had to be her first concern. Unfortunately, considering said people were mostly either marines or the kind of research scientists who would run _toward_ an explosion to see if they could take any interesting readings from it, she seldom got much support in that priority.

"Oh, yes. This whole room is a..." He gestured as he chewed over the right choice of words. "Scanning chamber, yes? Like... MRI room. Fully shielded."

"So it's designed to scan human beings?" she said hopefully. An Ancient medical scanner, if they could get it working, would be an incredible asset. As Rodney's fortunately non-lethal condition had proved, the Pegasus galaxy was full of hazards they simply didn't know to be on the lookout for.

"When set correctly." Radek nodded quickly. "Also, there is a secondary shield." He indicated where the panelling on the device had slid aside to reveal something like a hexagonal aquarium. "When the secondary shield is engaged, radiation is restricted to the inner chamber, so more dangerous levels can be used without damage to human - or Ancient - operators."

"So Rodney was right," Elizabeth realised. "This _is_ a radiation test chamber as well as a medical scanner."

Radek quirked an eyebrow her way. "Rodney is usually right. This is why we do not mutiny and replace him with a more agreeable man."

Elizabeth smiled. Rodney McKay was a person who took... a certain amount of 'getting to know you' time to properly appreciate. The fact that he _was_, actually, at least ninety percent as brilliant as he repeatedly proclaimed himself to be was probably the only reason no coworker had yet murdered him before that time was up.

"There are failsafes to make sure the outer chamber can't be flooded with lethal radiation when it's occupied?" she checked.

"Presumably," Radek said, a word that didn't fill her with a huge amount of confidence. "But we are proceeding with caution. Thus far, I have been testing it only on vegetable matter."

The tray of 'vegetable matter' he produced, Elizabeth couldn't help noting, appeared to be a portion of the alleged bean casserole that they had been served last night. Having actually eaten her helping, she wasn't entirely sure she would want to know what results the machine produced.

He placed the tray and closed the inner chamber with practised hands, tweaking controls and adjusting settings until he was satisfied. Screens of Ancient text flowed by, with little time for her to pick up much more than the general impression of numbers. Doctor Zelenka was, it shouldn't be forgotten, sufficiently skilled at picking up languages to discuss the intricacies of alien technology in a tongue that he hadn't been born to - but it was something else that allowed him to follow the data with such ease. Mathematics was a language all its own, and those who understood it seemed to regard the symbols or words that expressed it nothing more than a mere technicality.

Satisfied, he touched one last panel and stood back. Elizabeth watched in fascination as rings of light pulsed through the crystal aquarium. Up above, a holographic image started to take shape, growing more detailed with every pass.

Then the image flickered and died, to be replaced by a blinking message in Ancient text. Elizabeth just had time to pick out the words for 'warning' and 'expands/outgrows/exceeds' when all the lights on the machine abruptly died, and the crystalline chamber popped open.

The bean casserole was now a blackened smear on the bottom of the tray. Its smell had not improved.

She exchanged a look with Radek, who gave her a small, mild shrug.

"The power settings may still require some fine-tuning," he allowed.

* * *

Seeing his clone lying unconscious in an Asgard medical pod was the weirdest out-of-body experience he'd had in a while. Jack had met his robot duplicate, been impersonated by entirely too many aliens, and even swapped bodies with Teal'c, but somehow this was even more disconcerting. An identical duplicate was easy to consider an impostor, but 'Jon' was just different enough to think of as a separate person.

_Is that your dad?_ The innocent and obvious assumption had stung, and not just because of the age thing. He'd once had a son, who would be not a million miles away from his clone's apparent age, if-

If. Best to stay well away from that 'if', because it led to some places that were difficult to claw his way back out of.

But yeah, there was an uncomfortable paternal feeling going on there, and knowing how messed up it was to be wanting to parent _yourself_ wasn't enough to switch it off. Add to that the usual clone-related heebie-jeebies, an absolute _bitch_ of a headache, and the sinking feeling Thor was about to tell him something he wouldn't like, and this wasn't turning out to be the best of days.

Thor told him something he didn't like.

"O'Neill, it appears your clone's physiology has changed significantly since our last opportunity to examine it."

"That's called growing," Jack interjected. "We do it the natural way around here. Uh, no offence," he added, contemplating Thor's decidedly short stature.

Thor, much like General Hammond, had mastered the art of appearing to listen attentively to everything he said while simultaneously ignoring him completely. Jack was sure it must be one of the super secret leadership skills in the 'Generalling For Dummies' handbook that no one had gotten around to giving him yet.

"Our scans indicate that his genetic code has undergone structural alterations on a level currently impossible to achieve by human technological standards. In addition, his brainwaves have adopted a pattern similar to that manifested in you after your exposure to the Ancient database."

See, it wasn't that Jack had a problem with big words; it was just that when you strung a whole lot of them together into one big-ass technical explanation, the part of his brain that was supposed to be doing more important things - like, say, monitoring their immediate environment for things that might explode, bite, take them as hosts or assign him paperwork - objected to freeing up that much processing power. In the time it took to decode Thor's version of 'It's just like that time with the head-sucker thing' he could have done three sweeps of the room and gone for donuts.

"So it's just like that time with the... head-sucker thing?" He made appropriate hand gestures. "Well, suction it out of his brain again and send him on his merry way." With a not-so merry kick in the ass for dragging a sixteen-year-old civilian into things. Just the thought of the headache _that_ debriefing was going to be made him grimace.

He wasn't an expert on The Faces of Thor, but this one looked entirely too apologetic for his liking.

"I am afraid, O'Neill, that in this case that will not be possible. The device you encountered previously loaded new information into your mind, but did not alter the underlying structure. The side-effects you experienced were due to your brain's lack of storage capacity, which caused existing information to be overwritten."

"Hey!" Jack frowned, and wondered whether or not he'd just been insulted.

"But this new device is affecting Jon's brain... physically?" Daniel tried to cut to the heart of Thor's explanation. See? See? Now why couldn't he do that with his _own_ explanations? Yes, it was all very fascinating - _in the lecture room_ \- but in the field, nobody needed to hear a twenty minute treatise on the origins of ritual traditions when the words they were looking for were, "Don't touch that unless you want an arrow in your butt."

Thor nodded. "I believe the device that you describe was one of many created by the Ancients in an attempt to stave off the plague that threatened their people. It was intended to help regenerate deteriorating tissue, in order to keep those infected in a stable condition while a cure was sought."

"Okay, but Jon doesn't have the plague," Carter pointed out. "Why would it try to 'cure' him?"

Thor looked, insofar as it was possible to tell, distinctly shifty. "O'Neill, I am afraid we have not been entirely honest with you or your people."

The three members of SG-1 exchanged glances. "Well, that's always what you want to hear from your allies," Jack noted, stomach sinking.

"We did not in fact, as you put it, 'suction out' the knowledge that was downloaded into your mind. We simply prevented any further information from being imported, and repaired the mental damage that had been done."

"You mean it's all still in there?" Jack's eyes widened.

Thor tilted his head. "It is inaccessible to your conscious mind in its current format."

"Like deleting a piece of software instead of properly uninstalling it," Carter said. Jack raised an eyebrow her way for clarification. "Remember that talk about not just pressing 'delete' we had, sir?" she said, smirking. "If you just erase the executable file then the program no longer runs, but your system is still clogged up with lots of subsidiary files that no longer serve any purpose."

He turned back to Thor. "So you decided to just leave me... clogged?"

"Yes. It was judged that the removal of the information still remaining would create unnecessary risk to your mental facilities. You cannot access the information on a conscious level, and it is not causing you any harm."

Daniel had that constipation face that suggested he was about to make a thing about the 'on a conscious level' deal, so Jack hurried things along. "Okay. So how come I didn't know about this?"

Thor made an expression that Jack would have classified as raising his eyebrows if, you know, he'd had any. "It was felt that... certain elements in your government might fail to respect our warning that the information was no longer accessible."

"Ah." Yeah. Jack had to hand it to the little grey guy: wise decision. If he'd known, he would have been obligated to report it upstairs, and then... Well, the idea of the NID being after _his_ brain was kind of funny, actually.

In an 'only because it's not actually happening' sort of a way.

"That explains why the second download progressed so much faster than the first," Carter said, in a tone that suggested she'd been wondering about that for some time. He wasn't sure he liked the idea of the contents of his brain being a subject for Carter-theorising. "But what about Jon?"

"Under normal circumstances, the healing device would have detected him to be a species distinct from the Ancients, and would have had no effect on him. However, the traces of the initial download would have been present in your clone just as they were in you. In light of that discrepancy, the device would have been likely to reach the conclusion that he was an Ancient who had suffered traumatic brain injury, and attempt to repair the perceived damage."

"So it's trying to fix his brain," Jack said.

"And yours," Daniel added. "Thor, what about Jack? He was exposed to the device too."

"Only for a second!" he said defensively.

"O'Neill's scan also showed traces of reorganisation on a molecular level, although to a much lesser degree."

Okay, that sounded like the kind of thing that was likely to give you a headache. "But there's no permanent damage, right?" Jack might not have the greatest brain in the room - although, to be honest, the combined presence of Daniel, Carter, and the Supreme Commander of the Asgard fleet was weighting the scales _just_ a tad - but that didn't mean he wasn't attached to it.

"The structural changes are very minor, and at their current stage entirely harmless, or even beneficial."

"Sweet." He was sure he'd jarred more than a few brain cells loose over the years, what with all the dying and the oxygen deprivation and the being repeatedly hit on the head with blunt objects. And sharp objects. And projectiles. And energy blasts. And, occasionally, low-flying members of his team.

"So why is Jon's condition still deteriorating, now he's been removed from the proximity of the machine?" Carter asked. Thor turned his big eyes her way.

"The healing device causes... agents... to form inside the subject's body, in a similar manner to what you would call nanotechnology. The longer the exposure to the device, the larger the population formed, and hence, the more rapid the healing process."

"So I'm gonna go the same way, just slower," Jack said grimly.

Thor hesitated. "There is also another point of concern."

"Of course there is," he said.

The Asgard seemed reluctant to continue. "I fear, O'Neill, that I may have unwittingly placed you in greater danger by bringing you and your clone into close proximity," he said finally.

"How?" Carter asked.

"A population of such agents is bound to the genetic code of the carrier, giving it a unique identity. They communicate information to each other, but not to others outside the population, unless a central signal is sent through the control device."

"But Jack and... uh, the other Jack... have the same genetic code," Daniel said.

"Yes. It is conceivable that, were the two of them in physical contact and their brainwaves synchronised, the two populations would consider them to be a single entity, and hence pool information. Should this occur, it is likely that part of the greater population would transfer into O'Neill's body to provide more even coverage."

"I touched his _arm_!" Jack protested. "We didn't... _rub brains_." He contemplated the obvious 'on a first date' joke, realised how incredibly icky that would be in context, and kept silent. Damn duplicates always complicated everything.

"Physical contact or even close proximity would be enough to cause synchronisation," Thor said. "In his current state, your clone's natural telepathic ability has been heightened."

"Whoa, whoa." Jack rewound that. "Natural... _telepathic_ ability? Is this another of those 'inaccessible on a conscious level' dealies that you didn't get around to telling me about?"

"All humans possess it, to a greater or lesser degree," Thor said calmly. "In your people it is a vestigial talent only, rarely possible to distinguish from intuition or empathy, and strongest between close relatives."

"And you don't get much closer than a clone," Daniel said.

"Great. So those things are making him sick, he's put the mind-whammy on me and now they're gonna make _me_ sick, and _you_ can't help us fix it." Jack gesticulated a little wildly in Thor's direction, but the Asgard took it with his customary calm.

"I am afraid not, O'Neill."

He sighed heavily. "Okay." He waved a hand at his unconscious clone. "So... when's he going to wake up?"

His clone's eyes immediately cracked open. "I'm awake," he said, clutching the side of his head. "And I know exactly how to fix this." He swung his legs out of the medical pod, and stood up, albeit unsteadily. "I have to get to Atlantis."


	13. Chapter 13

** XIII **

"Obviously, it's a power supply problem. The crystals we picked up from Iaerona are a different magnitude to the others. I told him. I drew out a detailed schematic. But did he even take the diagram with him? Oh, no. 'You must rest, Rodney. I have studied interfacing issues carefully, Rodney. Everything is under control, Rodney.' As if we don't all _know_ who it was who shorted out the crystals on that portable cooling unit trying to convert it into an ice-cream maker. 'Inexplicable power surge' my ass."

For a man with a serious respiratory problem, McKay sure did manage to talk a lot. Ford shifted position and tried not to sigh too audibly.

It wasn't that he didn't like the doc. There was something inexplicably loveable about him - which was, clearly, nature's way of ensuring that he survived long enough to make use of that ginormous brain before somebody shoved him out an airlock. But sitting with a McKay who was bored, cranky, and confined to the infirmary while there was something scientific going on elsewhere could only be a masochist's idea of fun.

Apparently, he was a masochist. Or maybe he was just feeling guilty.

"...And why am I wearing scrubs, anyway? Do they expect me to hop out of my sickbed and join in when they're short-staffed for surgery? Because I did very well in biology, actually, but I'm not that good at cutting into things when they're, you know, pulsating and squishy - although, frankly, I can't see how I could do a worse job than the nurse who did my last oxygen treatment, do I _look_ like my nose is at a forty-five degree angle? But still, I don't see why I can't wear my own clothes. Is the treatment somehow compromised by the introduction of comfortable nightwear? I'm convinced this is some freakishly controlling plot of Carson's to stop me from making a break for it. I mean, pink scrubs? Who in their right mind orders _pink_ in a medical setting? Surely the point is for it to be actually visible if your patient starts spouting blood everywhere."

"Uh-huh," Ford said, chin a heavy weight where it rested on his palm.

"Exactly. He's keeping me prisoner here for some nefarious scheme of his own. I'm sure Elizabeth told him to do it to give Zelenka a chance to get at my notes. She's a diplomat, it's always 'let the other scientists have their fair turn, Rodney'. What she fails to realise is that the other scientists don't get their fair turn because they use their fair turn to screw up all the progress I've made and then I have to work doubly long hours to fix it. So, really, this little plot of theirs isn't giving me time off at all - it's an anti-vacation! They're _increasing_ my workload. At the very least they should allow me access to my laptop."

"Uh-huh," Ford said, and carefully repositioned his elbow before it slid too far over and he ended up slumped on the floor.

"See? You see the sense in that. Anybody who isn't an insane megalomaniac Scottish medical tyrant can see the sense in that. So can you bring it to me?"

"What?" Ford blinked, waking up at little.

McKay waggled an impatient hand at him. "My laptop. I need to doublecheck those equations before Zelenka takes out the city's entire supply of bean casserole and moves on to the vegetable samosas."

"I'm pretty sure- wait, we have samosas?"

"Doctor Manuelsson's attempt to do something edible with that weird purple stuff we traded for with the Vidreenans."

Ford raised his eyebrows. "That was a vegetable?"

"Well, we're fairly sure we ruled out animal, although the jury's still out on... mineral..." McKay let out a high, squeaky cough, like a dog-toy being stepped on.

"You okay, Doc?"

"Fine," he said, at a pitch well out of his usual register, and clamped his mouth shut.

Ford could see his face going redder and redder and his eyes beginning to water. He stood up to get a nurse. McKay waved his arms in angry semaphore.

"I'm fine!" he attempted to repeat, and lost the battle in an explosion of helpless coughing.

Somehow, Ford didn't think Doctor Beckett was going to relax those 'rest and no stress' rules just yet.

* * *

"Thor. Buddy. Come on, you owe me. Or... him. Both of us. Road trip to the Pegasus Galaxy?" 'Jon' grinned optimistically. "It'll be a blast! We can kick back, have a few beers..."

Sam had to smile at his enthusiasm. He was different from the General, in ways that the scientist in her couldn't help mentally cataloguing. Maybe it was the new, peaceful life he'd had a chance to adjust to, or maybe it was simply the fact that this was a Jack O'Neill who'd never felt the burden of commanding from outside the front lines. Her CO wore his promotion well, but it sat heavily; she couldn't help but think he'd aged more in his months as a General than he had in the seven years prior.

Thor tilted his head in a way that she thought connoted sorrow or disappointment. "I regret, O'Neill, that I cannot spare the time away from my duties to convey you to your destination," he said. "However, I will attempt to ascertain whether there are any Asgard ships scheduled to travel through that sector of space." He disappeared from the conference room in a blaze of bright white light.

"Yeah, thanks for that, buddy!" Jon called into empty space after him. He started to drum his fingers on the tabletop.

"We haven't had contact with the Atlantis expedition since their departure," Daniel said, with deliberate casualness. "Really, if Jon's going to go, we should send a team along with him to touch base with them."

"We don't know what conditions are like out there," Sam chimed in. "It would have to be somebody with a lot of experience of gate travel."

"Somebody who can read Ancient," Daniel said, nodding his head.

"And somebody who's up-to-date on our current understanding of their technology," Sam added.

They both looked at Teal'c.

"I would accompany O'Neill on this quest regardless of his destination," he said calmly.

Fine. Put them both to shame, why didn't he?

Jon waved a hand airily. "I appreciate that, T, but you don't need to play bodyguard on this one. We both know I'm not the original article." There was a slight twist of bitterness to the words, which hurt, and a larger dose of resignation, which hurt more. It was harder to separate the two O'Neills in her mind now that Jon had grown into his adult face.

Not really Jon, the niggling little voice of her conscience insisted on reminding her. That was just a convenient fiction to make it easier on everybody else. In his own head, he was still Jack.

Teal'c inclined his head. "On the contrary, O'Neill, you are still the original article, merely... copied."

Sam could _see_ a million possible Xerox cracks flowing through the young clone's mind.

"Actually, the... other... original article is probably going to be making the trip with us anyway," Daniel stepped in. "You heard what Thor said. He has the same condition as Jon has, only less advanced."

"And it may not stay that way," Sam said suddenly. "Remember, the General has been exposed to the-" she was not going to call it an Ancient headsucker device, she was _not_ going to call it an Ancient headsucker device- "effects of the Ancient knowledge repository again since the time he was cloned, and the transformation had time to advance a lot further. His brain is already more altered than Jon's was at the beginning."

"Oh, my brain's been plenty altered for a long time." Jon gave her a wry look. "_General_?" he added incredulously.

"You didn't notice?" Daniel said.

"I was a little preoccupied by the low-flying pigs." He raised his eyebrows. "When, why, and what kind of recreational drugs were involved?"

Yeah. Drawing a mental line between this familiar-faced high schooler and her CO wasn't going to be a major problem at all.

* * *

Jamie was beginning to get decidedly twitchy. After the first flurry of excitement following his arrival on the base, he'd been dumped somewhere that was too well-appointed to be called a cell, and too well-guarded to be called a guest room. He'd sat there for just long enough to start wondering if he was ever going to be let out, and then collected and escorted to some kind of briefing room. There was a big window running along the length of one wall, but all he could see through it was a security shutter.

His escort led him over to the table and then took up a guarding position against the wall. These military types weren't nearly so overtly threatening as Hawkins and his thugs, but their silent professionalism was still intimidating.

The office door at the far end of the room opened, and the older O'Neill emerged. He was now wearing the same drab green uniform as everyone else on the base seemed to, but his version had stars on the collar. Jamie might not be able to recognise most of the lower orders of rank insignia, but he definitely knew what stars meant.

_Ohcrap._

"So." O'Neill rested his hands on the tabletop and gave Jamie an unreadable look. "James Thomas Preston, age sixteen, of Mountain Springs High School. Care to explain what you're doing here?"

Jamie explained.

The General listened to his babbling intently, pressing for clarification on a number of points; could he draw a picture of the artefact, did it do anything apart from glow, how many men had he seen at the biotech company?

He also said things like: "A _moped_?" and used terminology like "glowy stone football thing" and "Bat-toaster". The longer Jamie talked to him, the more an utterly crazy yet somehow beguiling suspicion grew.

"Jon's not your cousin, is he?" he said, after the questions finally tailed off.

"He tell you that?" The General's face revealed nothing. But it was a very _familiar_ kind of nothing.

It was crazy. But what was crazy, in a world of glowing footballs, ray guns, genetic experiments and little grey aliens?

"He's a clone, isn't he?" Jamie said boldly. "He's _you_."

A resemblance, no matter how amazingly close, was no reason for such a wild conclusion. But it wasn't just a face; it was mannerisms, words... and most of all, it was Jon. A teenage boy who could move like a trained ninja. Who could recite episodes of _The Simpsons_ practically word for word, and then turn around and not know some facet of pop culture any kid his age could hardly have _avoided_. Who liked being pursued by teenage girls just fine... until one of them made a genuine effort to catch him, at which point came absolute terror.

Jon was an extremely weird kid. But only mildly strange for a fifty-year-old stuck in high school.

The General made a pouty face as he contemplated, and Jamie mentally upgraded that to 'moderately strange'. But he was sure he was right.

"We're gonna have to have you sign some confidentiality agreements," O'Neill said finally. Jamie knew that oblique hint that the answer might be classified was as close to confirmation as he was ever going to get.

He accepted the paperwork soberly. At school a couple of days ago, if someone had dropped this on him as a hypothetical situation, he probably would have been talking about rights, freedom of information, how the military couldn't hold a damn thing over the heads of somebody who hadn't sworn an oath to them. Here and now, it never occurred to him to argue the instruction. He wasn't sure exactly where he was, how he'd got here, or what kind of crazy secrets he'd stumbled into the edge of, but it was obvious these things were of life and death importance. He might, just, possibly have spent some time up in orbit with an honest-to-God _alien_, but he knew he could never tell anybody.

He owed that much to Jon.

Jamie signed and initialled the sheets, reading them through even though the military jargon quickly blended together into one big blob of 'just keep your mouth shut, okay?' He was on the curve of the final 's' when a blaring alarm went off and sent his pen skidding across the paper.

"Unscheduled off-world activation," a voice announced over the klaxon. The only part of that Jamie really understood was 'unscheduled', but that combined with the alarms was enough to set his heart to racing unpleasantly. The military did not usually smile on unscheduled things.

He saw General O'Neill stiffen in a way that he recognised from Jon. Add forty years and a uniform, and it was suddenly obvious that he was looking at a man preparing to go into battle.

O'Neill stood up.

"You're going to have to go back to your room for a while," he said. Jamie got up and let the guards escort him out without arguing.

As he left the briefing room, he saw the shutter on the window starting to go up, but the door had closed behind him before he had the chance to see what was beyond it.

* * *

Sam arrived at the gate room just as her father was stepping through the wormhole.

"Hey, Sammie." He gave her a tense nod as he strode down the ramp, eyes already sliding past her to settle on General O'Neill. Clearly, this was more than a cursory follow-up visit.

"Jacob." The General gave a nod of his own as Daniel skidded into the room to join them. Sam instinctively kept an ear out for Teal'c, but his measured tread never arrived. He must have stayed back in the conference room with the General's clone.

How much must it burn for Jon to hear the gate activation, and know he no longer had the clearance to run down and check it out?

Her father bowed his head and let Selmak take over. "General O'Neill, we bring troubling news. Our scientists have finished decrypting the data recovered from the laboratory on Kelshan."

"Baal's installed that engine in a ship." The General's supposed inability to remember technical details mysteriously disappeared when there was serious business on the line.

"A modified personal transport," Selmak confirmed. "The craft has the outward appearance of a tel'tak, although it is considerably more advanced."

"Well, that's not so bad, is it?" Daniel volunteered. The General cocked a disbelieving eyebrow, and he shrugged his shoulders. "I mean, yes, Baal with an Ancient interstellar engine, bad, obviously. But he can't declare war from a tel'tak. At most he could man it with, what, half a dozen Jaffa?"

"Not Jaffa." Her father took the reins back from Selmak, and regarded them all with a serious downturn to his mouth. "There was more on that crystal than just technical data. It seems technology and Goa'uld mechanics aren't all Baal's been acquiring."

"He also got a great deal on his tel'tak insurance through Geico?" the General suggested. Her father ignored him.

"It seems Baal had Teshram take care of another request for him before he disbanded the project. Just before he took off in his new ship... he picked up a vat of freshly matured Goa'uld symbiotes."

* * *

Lieutenant Brand's quick fingers danced over the interface. He was working from memories of things he'd never had the chance to put into practise before, but the Goa'uld words scrolling across the screen bore out the fact that everything was running smoothly.

Fortunately. Having to report that the engines were failing this soon after leaving Lord Baal's base would not bode well for his future career. Or survival.

"The engine is now running at full efficiency," he reported aloud.

He straightened up, and found himself looking into the dark eyes of Major Hertzberg. The memory of Brand's first encounter with the man surfaced. When the Major had first been assigned to SG-6, Brand had considered him just another dumb marine; the SGC equivalent of a Jaffa, there to provide muscle and little else. He had proven his worth in that role in several firefights, but right now, Brand's experience with Goa'uld and Ancient technology made him a considerably more valuable member of the team.

A fact that clearly didn't sit well with his nominal 'superior'. Hertzberg's lip curled in a scowl. "There's no need to be so proud of the fact you failed to break it."

He ignored that with a lofty smile, and headed toward the bridge to give the good news to their leader.

"Lord Baal. The Ancient engine is successfully integrated with the craft, and we should reach the city of the Ancients in approximately six days as the Tauri reckon time. Exactly as you anticipated."

The senior Goa'uld turned around from his inspection of the starscape, and smiled beatifically.

"Of course. Am I not a god?"

He knelt before the feet of his master. "You are, my Lord."

At least until he became accustomed to this new host, and gathered the intelligence necessary to bring about a takeover. Baal was old, his host a primitive; the Tauri were much more advanced than the pathetic scraps of humanity the so-called System Lords had taken millennia ago. And his own host had the greatest knowledge of all of them. The only threat to his dominance was the female, Sorvino, who understood the writing of the Ancients. He would have to make sure he tortured that knowledge out of her before he had her killed.

After all, the city of Atlantis must hold many prizes... but it took no intelligence at all to realise that so much treasure kept for one was better than shared among five. It was convenient to coexist with his fellow Goa'uld for now, until their guise of an SG-team had got them inside. After that... well, there was room for only one god in a galaxy, and he fully intended to be it.

Somewhere deep down below the surface level of his mind, the voice of the former Lieutenant Brand was still screaming defiance. He ignored it. It would fade away completely, given time.


	14. Chapter 14

** XIV **

"This is the right street?"

Jack had assigned himself the job of driving the Preston kid back home, despite a mountain full of eager young airmen who seemed to positively _live_ for the excitement of ferrying people about. Or appeared to when they were in the General's presence, anyway.

He'd been glad of the excuse to get off the base for a while. He still had a headache, a fact which he couldn't let slip for fear of being hauled down to the infirmary, and the presence of his clone made him decidedly itchy. By mutual consent they'd avoided being in the same room ever since Thor had beamed them back down.

Still, he felt an odd obligation to honour his other self's commitments, and that meant delivering the sleepy-eyed boy in the seat beside him safely back to his parents.

"Uh, yeah, um... it's that house there." The kid pointed, then brought his hand back to cover a yawn. Jack pulled up on the opposite side of the street and gave him a sideways glance.

"Sure you're not going to get into trouble with your folks?"

He considered. "Uh... nothing that could be improved by having an Air Force General talk to them."

"Okay." Jack accepted that. "We've got your moped in storage. I'll have a guy bring it back to you tomorrow after they've checked it for... stuff." Bombs. Naquadah. Alien parasites hanging out in the gas tank. Who knew what his scientists felt it necessary to search for?

"Okay." Jamie yawned again, and started to get out of the truck. He paused with his hand on the doorhandle. "I'm never going to find out what happens to Jon, am I?" he said, rather sadly.

"I'll have him come see you next time he's in the area," Jack promised. It wasn't worth much, and they both knew it.

"Yeah. Okay, well-" The kid popped the door open and the light came on, causing the blond highlights in his hair to glow. Jack couldn't help flinching at the brightness, slamming his elbow on the steering wheel. Jamie paused. "Are you okay?"

"Fine." Jack forced himself to straighten his face out of the grimace of pain. "Fine," he repeated, more gruffly. "Go."

The kid didn't look happy about it, but he went. Jack watched until he was inside the house, and then restarted the engine.

Goddamn headache. It was getting worse by the moment. He'd have to swing by his house on his way back to the base, grab something low-strength out of the medicine cabinet to take the edge off. No way was he going to stop by the infirmary and endure a plethora of tests just to pick up a bottle of pain pills.

He managed to make it about half a mile down the road before he had to pull over, the flashing lights behind his eyes rivalling the headlights of the oncoming traffic.

"Aw, crap," he said with resignation, and picked up his cell to dial Daniel.

* * *

It was, Daniel had to admit, entirely possible that he'd consumed, maybe, just a little too much coffee. Or perhaps it was just the excitement of what they'd been discussing _during_ the coffee.

"Jack, it's Atlantis!" He briefly removed one hand from the wheel to gesticulate, and Jack pointedly tightened his grip on the edge of his seat. "A city - a whole _city_ \- that was once occupied by the Ancients! Can you imagine how much this would advance our understanding of their culture? We've been trying to piece things together from, from ruins and isolated pieces of technology. It's like trying to build a viable picture of modern America from looking at your truck, a TV and the Lincoln Memorial."

Jack's eyebrows quirked and he pursed his lips thoughtfully. "That would about cover it," he decided eventually. Daniel narrowed his eyes.

"Jack, this is an incredible opportunity. The Asgard have offered us transport on one of their science and exploration vessels that's headed in that direction. I can't imagine what favours Thor's called in to arrange this for us. We haven't had any luck locating another ZPM with enough power to open a wormhole to another galaxy, and considering how much time has passed since their departure, it seems that the Atlantis team doesn't have access to one either. This could be our only chance to make contact with them."

Calling on Jack's loyalty to the people under his command generally worked better than appealing to his sense of intellectual curiosity.

Which Daniel was sure he had.

Somewhere.

Exceedingly well-buried.

"The Atlantis team could be _dead_," Jack said dourly. Daniel could tell from the way he was grimacing that his head was still causing him trouble. It had to be a pretty high event on the Jack O'Neill pain scale for him to actually bite the bullet and call out for assistance. Not that he would admit that if asked.

"Jack, this could be your clone's only chance," Daniel reminded him gently. "The Asgard can't fix what's wrong with him this time."

It was funny, he mused, how framing the argument in the terms of Jack's clone instead of Jack himself made it a lot easier to talk about things without being shut down. Maybe they should have tried getting Jack to talk about himself in the third person years ago. Hey, Jack, we know _you're_ fine, but how do you think your clone would feel in this situation?

"Fine, so we can send the kid," Jack said. "If he makes contact with the expedition team, he can bring you back their research. Allocation of resources, Daniel. It doesn't make sense to send you into a potentially hostile situation we know nothing about when your expertise isn't necessary to the mission."

Jack only busted out the vocabulary words when he was using them as a euphemism for 'no'.

"Well, actually, I was thinking not so much sending as... accompanying," Daniel admitted. Jack's eyebrows lowered.

"I can't leave the SGC to spend weeks in another galaxy, Daniel, you know that." His tone was equal parts censure and longing.

"Jack! You heard what Thor said. The Ancient device is restructuring your brain too. How long before you end up in the same state as your clone?"

"You don't know that's going to happen."

"We don't know that it's not!" Daniel shook his head as he pulled up outside Jack's house. "Jack, you can't afford to take the chance. Sam's already spoken to General Hammond-"

"You took this over my head?" Jack's eyes narrowed dangerously.

"There was no time!" he said with a defensive shrug. He stopped the engine, and turned to face Jack. "You were out here without a secure phone, and we had to get things moving. Thor's Asgard buddies will be here tomorrow."

There was a familiar flare of white light, and the inside of his car traded places with the interior of an Asgard ship.

"Or earlier," he added.

Jack smiled wryly. "Uh-huh."

* * *

The key to managing large-scale projects, Elizabeth had discovered early in her diplomatic career, was understanding that different subgroups within them had very different priorities. In the military, the only thing that mattered was whether it worked. In government, the only thing that mattered was whether it was well-documented.

With scientists, the only thing that mattered was whether it was _interesting_.

"Yes, we are having great difficulties with the power supply," Radek told her cheerfully. The fact that he'd yet to get the Ancient scanner to do anything that could even loosely be construed as useful didn't seem to bother him. "Doctor Kavanagh believes that the crystals we retrieved from Iaerona are designed for a device with greater tolerance for power fluctuations."

"Is he right?" she asked.

"Perhaps," he allowed. "But we do not intend to tell him so. Doctor Kavanagh works best when he is convinced we are all out to undermine and discredit him."

She smiled. "Speaking of feeling undermined... I hear Rodney's been plotting a takeover bid from his hospital bed?"

"He is sending me many helpful diagrams," Radek said wryly. "Unfortunately, Carson has forbidden him to read or hear any details of our work here, so he is helpfully solving problems that we are not actually having. On the plus side, should we come to encounter any of them, we will be very well prepared."

She shared his infectious grin for a moment, then turned as she heard footsteps arriving along the corridor. It was Sheppard and Teyla, still dressed in their offworld gear. Even though the mission they'd been on was a low-risk diplomatic follow-up, Elizabeth felt her tension slip down a notch to see them back.

"You made contact with the Iaeronans?" she asked.

"We were invited to the post-Wraith party," Sheppard said laconically. It was impossible to tell if he was pleased or disgusted by that fact. For someone who had so little self-restraint it was a wonder he survived in the military, the Major could be remarkably hard to read when it suited him.

"Aethred says that his people do not know of any other crystals like the ones we traded for," Teyla supplied more helpfully.

"But we did get them to agree to trade food," Sheppard added brightly.

Her trepidation probably showed on her face. "And you've agreed to trade... what, exactly?"

In theory, the moderating presence of Teyla should have prevented anything too heinous emerging from the Sheppard school of interplanetary diplomacy. In practise, there was always the possibility of one of those cultural blind spots where the Athosian people saw things differently to your average Earth native.

"Actually, the Iaeronans are more interested in knowledge than material goods," Teyla said.

"Technical knowledge?" Elizabeth said dubiously, but Sheppard shook his head.

"Nuh-uh. They have laws against learning from history." He gave a dark little smirk. Teyla looked slightly reproachful, but resigned to his attitude.

"The people of the Cycle believe that we should examine the past, but not try to recreate it," she explained. "They would be very interested in anything we could tell them of the culture and history of the Ancestors, but they have no interest in learning how to use their technology."

"Or how to defend themselves," Sheppard added bitterly.

"It is not their way," Teyla said simply. Elizabeth admired her ability to accept the values of another culture - even if, under oath, she would have to admit that her own private feelings leaned toward Sheppard's. Where did you draw the line between imposing your values on others, and attempting to prevent atrocities or unnecessary suffering? It was an ethical question the Stargate Programme had wrestled with since its inception, and there was little they could do except deal with each case as best they could as it came up.

When it came to the Iaeronans, repugnant as it might be to Sheppard to stand by and watch them refuse aid and defences, they couldn't _force_ a people to protect themselves from being slaughtered.

"Okay," she said. "So what did you promise them?"

"Nothing," Sheppard said proudly, dark mood sliding away into whatever depths he hid such things in. He bounced on the balls of his feet. "This time. I told them that our leader, the wise and powerful Doctor Weir, would do our negotiating for us."

"Really?" She was impressed.

"Really," he confirmed. Maybe there was hope for Major Sheppard, interplanetary diplomat yet.

Elizabeth looked at the deliberately inane grin he was continuing to hold while he waited like a kid for her response.

Okay, she admitted to herself. Maybe not.

* * *

"Colonel Carter." Teal'c gave her a dignified nod as his patrol of the ship brought him back around to their quarters. He was coping with being cooped up aboard the _Skidbladnir_ the best out of all of them, which was... not a surprise to anybody, really. There were few situations Teal'c couldn't adapt to with a degree of grace and dignity that left his human teammates looking like fidgety six-year-olds.

Of course, Sam would have felt like one anyway. She'd seldom had the chance to be aboard an Asgard ship without minor distractions like Replicator armies trying to eat it out from under her, and this one was an explorer vessel, built for speed rather than battle. She itched to start popping panels open and examining its innards.

That was the trouble with having allies. When you were running around a ship that belonged to the enemy you could steal technological secrets to your heart's content, but when there were diplomatic relations on the line you had to stop and ask permission before you looked at anything.

Politics. Bah.

"How's the General?" she asked, as she fell into step beside Teal'c. General O'Neill had not been entirely happy to be, as he put it, shanghaied into coming along on this expedition. Even though it was out of the question to have left him behind, she still felt guilty to have leapfrogged the chain of command to put in a call to General Hammond. There just hadn't been time to argue General O'Neill into placing self-preservation over the call of duty, so they'd planned on a sharply barked order from a superior to do the job instead.

Of course, as it turned out, there hadn't been time for that, either. Which probably explained why was he so pissed to have been beamed up and flown halfway out of the solar system before he even knew what had happened.

Or maybe that was down to the fact that the Asgard crew hadn't known to bring along his headache pills. He'd been lying in the dark with an arm over his face for several hours, snapping at anyone unwise enough to come within bitching distance.

"He says that he is well," Teal'c said, not needing to flavour the words with any inflection to convey a wealth of information. "However, I believe the proximity is problematic for both O'Neill and his clone."

She nodded soberly, remembering how Jon had been twitching in his sleep last time she'd looked in on him. If what Thor had said about the nanite agents communicating between the bodies of both O'Neills was true, trapping them together in the finite space of a starship could accelerate the degeneration in both of them. "I just hope this ship can move as fast as Thor said it could."

Teal'c cocked an eyebrow. "Have you not been conversing with the crew?"

Sam squirmed a little. "I tried! But... they look at me funny."

They were sharing the ship with five Asgard, but none of them were much inclined to talk technology with her. There was a perky little guy named Bragi who only wanted to pepper her with questions about Earth, the surly expedition leader Frode who either didn't speak English or was pretending not to, and three engineer types who were fascinated by their primitive Tauri gear but barely seemed to register that it came with real live primitive Tauri.

There was no denying it. They were onboard a ship crewed by Asgard science nerds.

"Much the same way, perhaps, that you would look at General O'Neill should he ask you to describe the inner workings of a naquadah reactor?" Teal'c said mildly. Sam narrowed her eyes. See, this was what people on the outside missed about Teal'c. He could be sly. Sly like a Jaffa who had a very Tauri-compatible sense of humour under that deadpan eyebrow.

"Where's Daniel?" she asked, because there was no point trying to call Teal'c on it when he was making fun of you.

"He is speaking with the Asgard Bragi."

She grinned. "A cultural exchange?" The thought of the two of them babbling at each other at ever increasing speed was an amusing one.

"Indeed. However, I do not believe that Daniel Jackson will learn much about the Asgard. When I left their company, he was attempting to explain to Bragi the function of bubblegum."

After years of practise introducing Teal'c, Cassie and later Jonas to the ins, outs and occasional corkscrews of Earth culture, the thought of such conversations no longer fazed her. "Did he mention the baseball cards? You know Daniel's not going to do well with baseball cards." For someone who could talk for several hours on the minutiae of a culture that had left behind a single stone tablet as their sole remaining record, Daniel had a remarkable gift for reducing team sports down to 'well, essentially two teams compete to score points with a ball' and then talking about the symbolism.

"I have recommended that Bragi seek clarification on points he is confused on from O'Neill."

Seeing Teal'c smirk his ass off, no matter how much more common it had become lately, would _never_ get old.

They continued on in comfortable silence, and split up at the next junction without needing to acknowledge it. Patrolling was ingrained habit as much as restlessness. No matter how benign a situation, the universe could figure out a way to get the drop on you.

On her next circuit past the sleeping quarters, Sam looked in on both the O'Neills. The General was finally snoring, the arm that had been over his face now dangling outside the Asgard sleep pod to brush the floor. In the opposite chamber, Jon appeared to be equally unconscious, but every so often he would jerk in his sleep, as if responding to a static shock.

And with every one of his spasms, the General's breathing hitched. Just for an instant, a tiny break in the rhythm of his snores... but Sam didn't think they could pin this one on his hyper-sensitive threat awareness. Whatever was going on inside Jon's body, the General was starting to feel the effects too.

She turned away, and once more made for the bridge. Maybe, if the Asgard wouldn't talk to her about their engines, she could at least get an estimated time of arrival out of them.

Because she had a horrible feeling that, however fast this ship might be, it wasn't going to get there fast enough.

* * *

"The people of Iaerona traditionally spend four days in negotiations before accepting a trade agreement," Teyla was explaining. "They attach great importance to cycles of time, and they believe that peoples must take time to know each other before they can call themselves friends."

"Sensible," John interjected, thinking of the Genii. So apparently the Iaeronans' die and let kill policy didn't extend to their fellow humans, only beings higher up the foodchain. He was really growing to _hate_ the human instinct to worship all things big and scary.

It wasn't the fact that the Wraith fed on people that made them evil. It was the fact they made people believe they were there to be fed on.

"Four Iaeronan days? That's a long time to be away from Atlantis," Doctor Weir said dubiously. John could tell she was itching to get through the Stargate and onto a planet with fields and trees and other such normal things... which was exactly why she was fighting so hard to find arguments against it.

John didn't think the Iaeronans had ulterior motives, and it was pretty unlikely they'd get hit by the Wraith again this soon after the last raid, but he still would have liked to join Ford and Teyla in escorting her. Unfortunately, on the rare occasions Elizabeth Weir went off-world, he was exactly the last person who should be out there with her. Especially with McKay incapacitated.

Not that the idea of him _or_ Rodney McKay taking over command of the Atlantis base was anything short of absurd and terrifying, but they were, nominally at least, the ones with the next most authority.

Chain of command was a bitch. John wished, not for the first time, that Colonel Sumner had survived long enough to take charge of Atlantis's military contingent. He hadn't been able to stand the man, but even taking orders from a by-the-book boot-polisher was better than taking orders from nobody at all.

Way back when he'd first joined the Air Force, people had talked about the burden of command. No one, however, had ever mentioned the _holy-crap-there's-no-one-out-there-to-catch-me_ freefall of command. Being responsible for the safety of his people did things to his stomach that no amount of aerial manoeuvres could begin to touch.

And Weir was responsible for all the same people he was, plus him, plus the ones who didn't come under his jurisdiction until they were standing in the middle of a firefight arguing that yes, they knew the Wraith were attacking, but this set of readings was quite important so could the whole 'fleeing for their lives' thing wait a few minutes?

Which was exactly why she needed to spend a few days sitting in on a hunt festival, trading stories for food. John pasted on his most appealing smile.

"Hey, but McKay's safely squirreled away in the infirmary," he reminded her. "That ought to exponentially reduce the opportunities for chaos. Besides..." he gave an easy shrug, "I'll be in charge."

Elizabeth twisted her mouth in a wry smile. "That's exactly what I'm afraid of," she noted.

He tried hard to look innocent.


	15. Chapter 15

** XV **

A single O'Neill, Teal'c had frequently observed, was a trial to coexist with on long, uneventful journeys. Two of them together could have made a vessel the size of a ha'tak seem crowded. Even - or, indeed, especially - when both were feeling unwell.

O'Neill and his clone were avoiding each other, a state of affairs that Daniel Jackson continually sought to remedy, but Teal'c, perhaps selfishly, preferred to see continue. It distressed him to see his brother's discomfort in the presence of his duplicate. Daniel Jackson spoke teasingly of alpha males and pack behaviour, but Teal'c believed his affection for O'Neill blinded him to a more troubling truth.

O'Neill was uncomfortable with his double because O'Neill was uncomfortable with himself.

And - as befitted one with the soul of a warrior - when faced with something that disturbed him, he made ready to attack. Albeit not always against the most sensible of opponents.

"I do not believe this is wise, young O'Neill," Teal'c said gravely, intent on not giving the appearance of casual dismissal. Even when not at the height of his fitness, O'Neill could be relied upon to make a fearsome opponent. However, while the adult O'Neill had hidden power to his slender frame, his younger clone had yet to acquire the muscle development that would come with full maturity. Physical size was a limited advantage - Teal'c was well aware he would have won almost every contest of his life if it were not so - but he feared that his warrior brother's clone would expect his new body to achieve feats it was not yet fully capable of.

He had witnessed this behaviour in O'Neill many times, when recovering from injuries. The Jaffa knew little of rehabilitation: wounds and sicknesses came in two groups, those that healed quickly and those that were _kek_. To be weak was to die. But among the Tauri, even minor hurts healed slowly - and so they had never learned to draw such a line between lesser and greater injury. Teal'c had seen and marvelled at machines to breathe air for lungs that could not, to clean blood that the body could not clean itself, to shock life into a heart that no longer wished to beat. To the Tauri, all things were to be fought and overcome.

And to O'Neill, all things were to be overcome here, now, today, even when the wisdom of experience suggested otherwise.

"Oh, come on, T, give me a break." The young O'Neill threw his hands out wide, a gesture even more exaggerated than those of his adult counterpart. Teal'c wondered if frustration and youthful exuberance made it so, or whether his brother had withdrawn even more in his months since becoming General than they had fully realised. "I gotta work off some energy here!"

"Perhaps Daniel Jackson or Colonel Carter could assist you," Teal'c suggested. The young O'Neill folded his arms.

"I can't spar with Daniel! Even if he has got muscles now." Teal'c was forced to admit that this was true. Daniel Jackson had become a warrior that no man or Jaffa could feel shamed to fight beside, but much of that skill had originated from O'Neill, and he still hesitated to strike a friend with full power in training. "And Carter still thinks I'm a kid."

"Colonel Carter is adept at believing the evidence of her own eyes." He wished to gently point out the truth of her perception without denying that there was more to it than that.

"And you're adept at believing the evidence of... other stuff." O'Neill flicked his eyebrows in challenge and assumed a fighting stance.

"Very well." Perhaps a brief demonstration would prove more effective than continued arguing.

Not that Teal'c truly believed this. But, after nearly three days aboard an Asgard vessel with no enemy to fight and no mission to complete, he would privately have to admit to being _rel hal'toc_.

Or, as the Tauri would put it, bored stupid.

It was an atypical session. At first, the young O'Neill's clumsiness was pronounced; he acquitted himself impressively for a part-grown boy faced with an opponent of Teal'c's stature, but dismally for a version of O'Neill. However, as their battle progressed, his reactions grew steadily faster, and whilst he was unable to gain an advantage, he parried and evaded Teal'c's attacks with ease.

This was interesting. Teal'c had long schooled himself in keeping his features blank to avoid signalling his next move. O'Neill knew his style as well as anyone bar Master Bra'tac, but still, such anticipation stretched the bounds of credibility.

Teal'c _thought_ strongly of making a low sweeping kick, and instead took a long step backwards.

O'Neill leapt out of the way of the kick he had not made, and staggered as he landed, obviously bewildered by his own actions.

He was not the only one. "Kid... what the hell are you doing?" The older O'Neill had appeared in the doorway behind them, scowling and holding his head. It was unclear whether this was due to a continuing headache or a futile attempt to tame what the Asgard sleep pods had done to his hair.

His clone spun around, a sharp retort probably prepared, but as it happened, Teal'c had a comment of his own to make.

"I believe, O'Neill, he is reading my mind," he said calmly.

* * *

"Ah, Major." McKay regarded him from his hospital bed with baleful eyes. "Come to rescue me from my alleged rehabilitation at the hands of that maniacal Scottish scalpel-wielder? Or do you need me to rescue you? Have the primates taken over the science department yet? I'm expecting to hear reports of dung throwing and bottom-baring any day now."

"Actually... it's getting pretty close," John was forced to concede, sitting down heavily beside the bed. "I don't know how Doctor Weir handles all this," he said wearily.

"Oh, please." McKay rolled his eyes. "They're obviously testing you. Somebody, who's clearly had minimal exposure to your actual personality, has decided that your temporary custody of the city - which, incidentally, is by far the most rock-brained leadership decision Elizabeth has ever made; I can only assume it's down to the lack of my steadying influence - is their opportunity to lobby for some sort of wholly unjustified perks. They obviously don't realise that you'll have about as much influence with Elizabeth when she returns as Doctor Facinelli's goldfish."

He digested that stream of words carefully, in order to find the most pertinent aspect to comment on.

"Wait, Doctor Facinelli has a goldfish?"

McKay gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Actually it's more of a pinkfish. The xenoichthyologists liberated it from a lab on... that planet with the upside-down trees. They think it might be genetically engineered as a living water-purifier. So far they've discovered it eats paper, any kind of biological waste, and those little tiny screws that hold the arms on to a pair of glasses. Doctor Stansfield was not pleased. They only managed to dissuade him from trying to flush it down the toilet by pointing out that we don't know exactly what kind of scanning protocols the city has in place in the sewage treatment centre."

There was, John mused, a lot more going on in the city than just the parts of it he received reports on. As a rule, he only heard about those scientific enterprises that A, impacted the city's most vital systems, B, irritated McKay, or C, blew up. The science team showed impressive creativity in getting the most innocuous of projects into all three categories at once, but still, there was a lot more going on that flew beneath his radar.

Apparently, things did not fly beneath Doctor Weir's radar. Doctor Weir did not require a radar. Because every issue in Atlantis, big and small, came zooming straight toward her desk.

"You know Kavanagh's already filed three different complaints with me against other expedition members?"

"Oh. Forward those to me," McKay said, and then pouted. "Although, obviously, to receive those, I would need my laptop - you'll notice I say laptop, a type of computer that is particularly noted for being, oh, _portable_-"

"Wait, you _want_ to receive Kavanagh's complaints?" John raised an incredulous eyebrow.

"Of course! There's a pool on. One more safety violation report about Simpson leaving her boots in the doorway, and there's chocolate in it for me."

Though the members of the Atlantis expedition were - at least technically - still getting paid, the city had rapidly developed the kind of barter economy that could only spring from several dozen genius minds with an unholy love for making graphs. John had been on bases before where ownership of a yo-yo could buy you things a thousand dollars couldn't out in the wider world, but this was the first one that had a calculated exchange rate between caffeine content and minutes of entertainment value.

"Do I get a ten percent agent's fee?" he checked. McKay narrowed his eyes.

"For bringing me my messages? What, are the trained monkeys on strike?"

"I think they're all sending me email," John said, leaning back in his chair.

"Ah, the monkeys and typewriters thought experiment." McKay's forehead wrinkled in a dissatisfied frown. "You know, whoever came up with that was woefully ignorant about statistics, not to mention the basics of primate behaviour. You can't even get a motivated office worker to work for half an hour without losing focus, how exactly are an infinite supply of monkeys meant to handle it? And how are we defining the complete works of Shakespeare? I mean, do the monkeys have to start over at every wrong keystroke, or are errors disregarded until the next correct character is registered? And, okay, even if we allow the - frankly flawed - initial premise that both monkeys and the time and space that contain them are genuinely infinite, what about other resources? All right, we'll charitably assume that the monkeys can be fed on scrap pages, and pretend that it's possible to have a hundred percent efficient recycling process, but that still doesn't address the issue of typewriter ribbons, whether the keys are immune to wear..."

John stretched out and put his feet up, and wondered if he should be worried at all that he'd come to regard the sound of McKay in full flow as a soothing break from the pressures of his day.

* * *

Daniel Jackson considered himself a patient man, but sooner or later, every man reached his limits. Unless that man was Teal'c.

Daniel lowered his book. Jack was still staring at him. He sighed internally and laid the book aside. "You're trying to read my mind, aren't you?"

Jack raised his eyebrows in as camp an expression of innocence as only a grey-haired USAF General who regularly blew the crap out of enemy installations could get away with.

"I think it's relatively unlikely that you'd be experiencing any telepathic effects yourself at this stage, sir," Sam chimed in, bless her. "Your clone didn't even seem to be aware what he was doing until Teal'c pointed it out."

"Assuming he was doing anything." Jack slid out of his inane mime act and into steely scepticism as smoothly as a car changing gear.

"Well, Jack, I'm pretty sure it's unusual to be jumping out of the way of moves your sparring partner hasn't made yet," Daniel pointed out.

"It's called _anticipation_!" Jack sounded the syllables out obnoxiously. "I've sparred with Teal'c a hundred times. I know how he fights."

"And I you, O'Neill," Teal'c rumbled. "I do not believe your clone's consistency in predicting my actions was within your normal abilities."

"So he was in the zone!" Jack shrugged. "He's young. His knees work better. He probably has better eyesight. No wonder he reacts faster."

"I keep saying you should get an eye test," Daniel said to him. "Don't think I didn't see you squinting at that paperwork last briefing."

Actually, he was more than a little suspicious that Jack had a pair of stealth reading glasses. It wasn't like Jack to neglect any aspect of physical fitness, but it _was_ very like him to deny all signs of weakness until literally backed up against a wall. Which was possibly going to be Daniel's next move in his campaign to uncover the existence of said glasses, since even Teal'c had yet to have any success in sneaking up on him.

Motion sensors. It had to be motion sensors. Maybe if he could convince Doctor Lee to let SG-1 borrow that jamming device from P41-239...

"I squint at all your reports, Daniel," Jack said, making a little squishing motion with his hands. "It makes the paragraphs look smaller."

"Read my mind now, Jack," he suggested, and levelled a pointed stare. Jack just smirked.

Sam had long since learned to pick up the thread of her explanations around and through their interruptions. "It's unlikely that your own condition has progressed anywhere near as far as your clone's, sir," she said. "Jamie reported that he suffered a series of seizures, with lapses into the language of the Ancients; even accounting for the exacerbating effect of your contact with Jon, it's likely that there would be more obvious physical signs before your brain's structure is changed sufficiently to support abilities like telepathy."

"Exactly," Jack said, with that vacant smile that was meant to make you think he hadn't understood a word of it when you knew damn well that he did.

"So, no mind reading for you just yet, Jack," Daniel said lightly, and went back to his book.

Maybe this time he'd get as far as page four before Jack found a new way to distract him.

* * *

It wasn't difficult to find the kid. Jack just slipped himself into his 'oh crap, I have weird new alien powers' mindset - it was disturbingly easy to find - and let himself drift where his instincts took him.

'Wherever you go, there you are,' and all that.

They sat in silence a while, watching the starfield. The Asgard appeared to appreciate the importance of having windows to look out of when you were out among the stars. He knew there was a reason why he liked the little grey guys. Aside from that whole 'regularly saving his butt' thing.

Or in this case, his butts. Or their butts.

Aliens should definitely be banned from creating any further replicas of him, if only to cut down on the grammatical confusion.

He glanced sideways at his clone, at the same time as his clone glanced sideways at him.

"You're thinking almost totally in Ancient now," Jack observed mildly.

His clone shrugged. "I'm still speaking English," he countered.

"Because you're using _my brain_ as a sounding board." He glowered.

"It's my brain too!" he said defensively, spreading his hands wide. "You're hardly using it. It's got fluff in the corners. What the hell do you do in that office all day?"

"Like high school mathematics is that much more demanding?"

Complicated equations stirred, unbidden, in the depths of his clone's mind. Jack only caught the edge of them, the shape without the substance, but it was haunting: like a word on the tip of the tongue, like _déjâ vu_. Things that he had once known, and would soon know again.

His clone's mind was undergoing a tectonic shift, and buried things were rising from deep beneath the surface.

But what the rest of SG-1 didn't realise was that Jack was right there in that changing landscape with him, already so inextricably linked that the Ancient knowledge locked in his own memory was struggling to break free. The link he'd been aware of between them for some days now was stretching like an elastic band as his clone's evolution raced on ahead of his own.

The further ahead he got, the faster Jack would begin to catch up.

He flicked his gaze sideways at his clone again. "You think Atlantis is the answer?"

In his clone's mind, images of a magnificent crystal city, rising out of the water. "I don't think." He raised a hand, and pointed to his head. "_It_ thinks."

Jack understood.

* * *

"Major Sheppard." In the midst of a dispute between the biology department and the mess over whether it was or wasn't reasonable to store a one-eyed decomposing alien thing in the portable refrigeration unit, Grodin's voice over his radio was like an angelic choir descending from heaven. John almost concussed himself leaping to grab his earpiece.

"Sheppard here. Go!" he barked. He was more than prepared to heroically run to the rescue if somebody's swivel chair had developed a squeak.

Not that the Ancients ever made things like chairs that squeaked, damn them.

But as it turned out, Grodin had called him in for something considerably bigger.

"It appeared on our screens a short while ago," Grodin said. "At first we thought it was a glitch in the system. I called Doctor Zelenka down to take a look at it."

"It's not a glitch?" John presumed.

Zelenka looked up from the screen he was examining. "Two things. One, apparently we have long-range scanners. Two, our long-range scanners are picking up a ship."

"Wraith?" John was instantly alert. When his hands didn't find the weapon they were automatically reaching for, his mind stretched out instead. Atlantis was there as a soft pressure at the edge of his thoughts, like a puppy nudging its nose against his hand in the hope of being stroked. It didn't know exactly what he wanted, but it knew all kinds of neat tricks, yes it did, and would he like to see one? Would he, huh, huh, huh?

Zelenka shook his head minutely. "The scanners would recognise Wraith technology. This ship is of unknown manufacture, and approaching... very fast."

He didn't much like that pause. "How fast?" They would have to recall Weir from her trading mission - or, if it was going to get here that fast, maybe they should leave her on Iaerona. She would be pissed as hell to be cut out of the loop, but if that ship had hostile intentions...

"Actually," said Grodin, raising his head, "it's already here."

"There is a-" Zelenka began.

"Receiving a signal!" Grodin interrupted. His eyes widened as something more came through his earpiece. "Major, it's..."

The screen in front of them abruptly switched to video. John found himself confronted with a distinguished looking middle-aged black man... in a very familiar olive green uniform. The man smiled broadly.

"This is Lieutenant Colonel Casey of Stargate Command - hello, Atlantis base!"


	16. Chapter 16

** XVI **

As the First Prime of Apophis, Teal'c had at times partaken of the finest delicacies the galaxy had to offer, and at others subsisted on the meanest of rations. A Jaffa might crow about the privileges his position bought him, but he would know better than to ever complain about its punishments.

In his time among the Tauri, he had experienced the pre-packaged field rations known as MREs - and discovered the honoured tradition of bitching about them. Although he did not compete in the sport himself, he was by now a well-educated spectator.

So it was always a shame when his companions declined to play.

Daniel Jackson, engaged in studying his books in preparation for their arrival at Atlantis, was eating mechanically with no apparent attention to what he was consuming. Colonel Carter, apparently experiencing some sort of flashbacks to Asgard rations, had been stockpiling the much-despised meal packages as though someone might take them away from her. And O'Neill, acknowledged champion in all fields involving complaining, was... preoccupied.

"Should we not invite your clone to join us in eating, O'Neill?" Teal'c suggested. He had noticed that the young O'Neill had begun to isolate himself from the other humans, spending most of his time in solitude or in silent companionship with the Asgard crew. Teal'c suspected that he was attempting to conceal the details of how far his situation had progressed.

"He's not hungry," O'Neill said, merely picking at his own meal.

Teal'c allowed his eyebrow to speak for itself. After a moment, O'Neill realised what he had said.

"I'm him!" he said defensively, spreading his hands.

Teal'c refused to let him off the hook. "You are in telepathic contact with your clone," he observed, not making it a question. O'Neill grimaced, but had the grace not to lie to his face.

"Look. T," he said finally, lowering his voice so their teammates could not overhear them. "I know, and you know, that the kid's on borrowed time. Atlantis is a shot in the dark. We don't know if he's got a plan - we don't even know if the city's still _there_. You know Daniel and Carter. They don't give up. They're going to want to document every second of this, keep looking for a solution... The kid doesn't want to spend the last days of his life as a test subject."

"You mean you do not," Teal'c corrected mildly.

"He's me," O'Neill said, flatly holding his gaze.

"Of this I am aware." Teal'c inclined his head slightly. "Very well."

He would keep O'Neill and his clone's secret - for the moment. If the time came that sharing it would benefit O'Neill, then that would change. As Master Bra'tac would have put it: _kol'ma a kol'sha nai'eem_.

Loyalty is not the same thing as obedience.

* * *

"But come on." Rodney stared at him in disbelief. "You can't seriously be expecting me to stay here in the infirmary while the rest of the city meets the SGC delegation. I'm the chief scientist! What, they're going to get their report from the first spotty little intern in a labcoat they can grab? I have vital information to impart."

"Rodney!" Carson spread his hands in exasperation. "You _can't_ leave the environment-controlled hospital area. The second you're exposed to unfiltered air, the organisms in your lungs will start multiplying again, and you'll be right back where you started. They're almost gone!"

Rodney rolled his eyes dramatically. "Yes, but you could cure me again, couldn't you?" he said, apparently directing the words at his bedside table rather than at Carson.

"Rodney!" The man was a menace. "You were severely weakened by the initial chest infection triggered by the spores. I know you think you're well now, but you've been lying on your back for a week. If the problem reoccurs, it could be much worse a second time."

"Fine. Then bring them in here."

It wasn't that he didn't sympathise, but... "You need clean, properly filtered air, controlled humidity, and minimal exposure to stress and agitation." That last was a losing battle at the best of times. "Crowding a dozen people around your bed and rehashing everything that's happened since we've come to Atlantis is not the way to go about it. Doctor Zelenka can sit in on the initial meeting and report back everything you need to know."

"Doctor Zelenka-" Rodney interrupted himself with a squeaky cough. "Doctor Zelenka is not my understudy in a high school production of _Romeo and Juliet_. We are not interchangeable! He won't ask the right-" He coughed. And coughed. And coughed again.

Carson placed a hand in the centre of his chest, and gently but firmly pressed him back down onto the bed.

"Rodney. Rest," he said sternly, and went to retrieve a glass of water. Rodney couldn't quite speak yet, but still managed to give him a malevolent look over the rim of the glass.

"I was going to give your laptop back, but now you've overexerted yourself, I'm not sure that's such a good idea," Carson added. "I'll have one of the nurses drop it in for you in a little while, when you've recovered."

He beat a hasty retreat from the room before Rodney could regain his voice.

* * *

After any number of attempts at conversation with the Asgard crew, Sam was still no closer to getting that peek into the _Skidbladnir_'s inner workings that she craved. And since, in the rush of their rather hurried departure, she hadn't been able to organise any work that it was safe to bring along, she was forced to focus her scientific curiosity elsewhere.

The mind of Jack O'Neill was probably fodder for a dozen different psychological studies, even when there was only one of him, but right now her interest in his actions was more medical in nature.

Which he would hate even more than the idea of his thoughts being analysed. After growing up with her father's example and years of experience at being The Girl, she thought she had the whole 'not showing your soft underbelly' thing down. Jack O'Neill, however, apparently handled injuries in accordance with some kind of inverse square law. His new boots gave him a blister, and you could bet the entire SGC, at least two Goa'uld, and half a dozen of Earth's allies would know about it before the week was out. Out on a mission, he could be hobbling around with a sprained ankle, fractured ribs and a knife wound to the gut, and the first you'd hear about it was when everyone was back home and the medical staff had the chance to blow their tops about it.

Trying to diagnose problems that left no obvious physical traces was even more fun.

"You noticed that too?" Daniel said, as they conferred in the small communal area adjacent to their quarters. Teal'c was sat cross-legged in his own room, getting in some kelno'reem time, but both O'Neills had disappeared into the bowels of the ship. As they had become inclined to do more and more often. Sam wasn't sure if it was more troubling to assume they were brooding together or separately.

"He's been zoning out more and more often when I talk to him," she confirmed. And she had enough experience to tell a worrying zone-out from the more traditional, 'Okay, I have no idea what you just said, so I'm just gonna stare at your left eyebrow here until you snap and run off to find a mirror.'

Not that she ever fell for that tactic.

Much. Anymore.

"It's got to be proximity to Jon," Daniel said. "You've noticed how when they're in the same room now, they both go non-responsive? Somehow, Jon's condition is accelerating the degradation in Jack."

"Is it degradation, though?" The question had been troubling Sam for a while now. "I mean, in a sense, it's evolution - artificially imposed, but is it so different from, say, the nanotechnology that allowed Shifu or the people on Argos to age at an accelerated rate? If the General's condition were to stabilise..."

"If his previous experiences with Ancient technology are any indication, Jack's body - even if it's more advanced than ours-" he spared her a slightly wry smile, "just isn't capable of supporting the necessary changes."

"Different situation, Daniel." Sometimes, in the excitement of discussing things with someone whose mind raced at the same speed as hers, she forgot that they weren't always approaching things from the same groundwork. Daniel's was a science of joining together isolated dots of information into a picture that made sense, whereas hers was a discipline married to the principle of the null hypothesis: nothing to be inferred from anything else until the connection is proven. "Before, we were talking about a knowledge database that flooded the memory storage centres of his brain. Not capability: capacity."

"Whereas this time it's actually restructuring his brain, rather than trying to fill it," Daniel said, nodding to show he understood.

"Like a hardware upgrade," Sam agreed. "Think of it as if, before, it was somebody trying to install a hugely complicated computer program on a system that didn't have the memory or processor speed to support it. Whereas this time, it's a case of putting in more RAM, a new processor, more peripheral devices... improving functionality without touching the information stored in memory."

"Except that it's being done by an incompetent engineer who's ripping things out and replacing them without shutting the system down first, causing glitches."

Sam smirked at him. "Back away from the computer metaphors, Daniel," she advised. He grinned back. "But yes, it's obvious from the seizures that the process isn't completely harmless - but then, it's working with inaccurate parameters. The technology falsely identified him as an Ancient, and so it's treating his body as if it can tolerate greater stresses than an ordinary human's. The chance of permanent damage is there - but so is the possibility that he'll achieve stability once the changes are completed."

Daniel had stilled. "So you think Jon... and Jack... may not need curing at all?"

She spread her hands helplessly. "I'm just saying, if the process does achieve stability... is it right to 'cure' somebody of having evolved to a higher level?"

The question took on a new resonance considering who she was posing it to: Daniel, who had once himself evolved beyond the human form, and then returned stripped not just of his powers but of the knowledge of what it had been to have them. She had often wondered how it felt to him to be mortal once more; whether his Ascension was as distant to him as a dream lost on waking, or if he was aware somehow of his shrunken limitations, conscious of feeling smaller, lesser, more contained.

There were a million questions, and all of them would go unasked, because the scientist in her was still shouted down by the part that was just selfishly glad to have him back. Daniel seemed, since he had come back, a calmer, more contented man, and she wanted that to be the truth so badly that she'd never probed deeply enough to risk finding evidence against it.

She was a lot afraid that if she did, it wouldn't change her opinion in the slightest.

And maybe that was why Sam was reluctant to trust her first instinct that any change in the General was automatically something that she had to change back.

"The question is," Daniel said soberly, "would Jack really _want_ to become an Ancient? He'd be chased by the NID, the Trust, our own scientists... his life wouldn't be his own. The same for Jon."

A subtle shift at the corner of her vision alerted her that Teal'c had come out of his meditation. She turned, and found dark eyes regarding them.

"Jon O'Neill's life is not his own in any case," Teal'c reminded them.

* * *

Maybe he'd just been marooned in Pegasus too long, but John couldn't help but feel wary of the new arrivals.

John himself had seen only as much of Stargate Command as he could glimpse on a one-way trip through it, but a number of the men under his command had served there. Over a dozen of them had confirmed the identity of Lieutenant Colonel Casey, and Bates had known the man well enough to conduct a lengthy interview with him and his 2IC and come out satisfied.

And yet there remained an itch at the back of John's brain, warning him not to trust these people. The trouble was, he didn't know if it was the voice of hard-won experience with enemy infiltration... or the voice of having been dumped in the crap by those higher up the command chain one too many times. Was the bad vibe he was getting his subconscious trying to save his life, or just good old-fashioned paranoia?

His own exposure to SGC personnel had been barely long enough to pick up names, never mind take a reading on whether these were people he would be willing to have at his back in combat. O'Neill had seemed okay - weird, and kinda blunt for a General, but okay - but then, at the time, John hadn't been assessing him as anything more than another random bigwig he had to chauffeur about for a day or two. Doctor Jackson had been distinguished from the dozens of other scientists running about the site only by the fact that he'd stayed on Earth.

The only other person he'd heard much about was Samantha Carter, and all he knew about her was that she was A, a Lieutenant Colonel, B, tragically dim for somebody who'd apparently designed the entire Stargate program from scratch, and C, madly in love with Rodney McKay. He had doubts about the veracity of at least two of those pieces of information.

To be honest, John had kind of expected that if the SGC were going to make contact with them, they'd either send a couple of hundred people or put the famous SG-1 on contact duty. This five-man team of relative nobodies was pinging his alarm bells, even though Casey's explanation - that they were the most qualified expendables to shove aboard a highly experimental ship - held water.

The ship itself was currently parked on the east pier, and causing much excitement among the scientific community.

"This vessel is amazing!" Zelenka had declared, waving his arms dramatically. "A true hybrid of Goa'uld and Ancient technology. The interfacing issues alone- if I could see how the engine has been connected-"

"All in good time, Doc," Casey said, clapping the smaller man on the shoulder with enough friendly force to rock him slightly. "I've got orders to debrief you all pretty thoroughly before I let anybody play with the technology. No offence."

"Not much taken," John said, baring his teeth in a stretched smile. Casey just laughed.

It probably said something about his life that he was highly suspicious of friendly people. If Casey had blasted in here with guns blazing, bitching him out for the crappy job he'd been doing, John might have been a lot faster to believe he really _was_ from the SGC. This whole buddy-buddy, 'great to see you guys alive out here!' deal he had going on was making him nervous.

Hertzberg was surlier, in a way that reminded him too much of Bates to immediately peg as hostile. John couldn't really begrudge him the finger-on-the-trigger attitude when he was privately wishing that Elizabeth was here so he could be making the same posture in response instead of playing diplomat.

He really wished McKay was out of the infirmary. There was nothing quite like having Rodney McKay at your side to make you look like the model of tactful diplomacy.

The rest of Casey's team, he hadn't yet had much exposure to. The skinny redheaded Lieutenant - Brand? - was staying aboard the ship, while Doctor Sorvino was keeping pretty quiet. Of course, she was the team's resident linguist, so she was probably reading the walls. For some reason, those wacky Ancients liked to write the equivalent of calming haiku on their staircases. Because nothing added that extra touch of Zen to your day quite like walking into the guy in front because you were trying to read a message at foot level.

And then there was the fifth man, the engineer. Alleged engineer. A big part of John's persistent brain itch was centred around him. There was just something... _something_.

He was a good-looking guy, almost obnoxiously so. And okay, a few smacks with the pretty brush wasn't technically suspicious even in the military, but there was a kind of self-awareness about it that screamed 'underwear model' more quickly than it did 'engineer'. In John's experience, the sort of men who spent a lot of time doing serious things with wrenches only paid attention to their own appearance when somebody stopped them to tell them they'd forgotten to put on pants.

Engineers could have charisma, but it was _scientist_ charisma, which typically came in three flavours: 'fun to watch when excited', 'scary intense about energy conversion ratios', and 'a few fries, some chicken nuggets, and a cardboard box short of a Happy Meal'. This guy had a cult-leader smile. There was an amused twinkle in his eyes all the time, and it wasn't the diplomatically held back laughter John was used to with Elizabeth.

No, John recognised this particular gleam very well. It was the kind that came along with a real gut-buster of a joke like, _Hey, hope you didn't need those people I just brutally slaughtered for anything important, ha ha ha._

He fell in beside the man as they headed with the others toward the room that Bates had chosen for the debriefing. "I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch your name earlier-?" He aired an insincere smile of his own, and didn't give a damn if it was spotted as such.

"Doyle," the man said, as the patch on his SGC uniform indeed bore out. He paused for a moment and tilted his head as if thinking, and then added smugly, "_Jack_ Doyle."

John couldn't help but mentally reach out for the city's systems, the eager buzz as reassuring as the weight of a weapon in hand.

* * *

Really, you'd think that a race as advanced as the Ancients could at least have invented video conferencing.

Rodney glowered as he scrolled through subsystem after subsystem on the laptop, looking for something useful and coming up dry. Dozens of sensor arrays checking for things the science teams still couldn't even _identify_, and they couldn't manage CCTV?

Maybe the Ancients believed in privacy. Or trusted their security procedures to keep all hostiles on the outside. Or hell, maybe they just turned into glowy balls of energy and floated through walls whenever they wanted to chat long distance. Whatever the reason, it was highly annoying.

"Don't worry, Zelenka will report back," they said to him. Which was entirely missing the point. He needed to be part of the discussion! Yes, yes, of course Zelenka could handle the tech specs, but he wouldn't push in the right places, he'd back down for stupid reasons like politeness, he didn't have Rodney's prior experience with the SGC or current experience on a field team...

Oh, hello, hello.

Rodney stopped, and scrolled back to the intriguing little flag that had caught his eye. Yep, one of the DDS sensors had picked up a signal.

It was Simpson who'd begun the standard notation of classifying the different systems and subroutines they uncovered as UI, TWUI, KWID or DDS. So far, not even Elizabeth had waded far enough into the lab reports to find out these stood for 'Understand It', 'Think We Understand It', 'Know What It Does' and 'Definitely Doing Something'.

It was definitely doing something. Rodney located the sensor array that had sent up the flag, and found it was out on the east pier. Hmm. So the hybrid ship had set off something.

He dug into the code and tried to figure out just what readings they'd picked up. It had to be something unique to the modified tel'tak - a quick browse through the sensor log confirmed that this particular sensor had never been triggered before. He grimaced over the untranslated annotations. Languages were not his thing; his knowledge of Ancient was mostly limited to computer syntax, a few standard phrases, and every conceivable variation on 'Urgent/Do Not Touch/Lethal/Caution'. The autotranslator could process the computer code itself, but it would slow everything down ridiculously to try and plug in even a halfway complete Ancient dictionary. He could see what was happening, but knowing how the signal was processed didn't help him to identify it.

On the plus side, he could tell from some familiar-looking time delay calculations that he was working with an array of transducers arranged over a plane, so it was obviously some kind of beamforming. It was child's play to assign a pixel colour to each value and put together an ultrasound-style picture. If he had no idea what the sensors were supposed to be looking at, then hey, why not translate it into a form he could actually look at?

At first the image was too messy, and had a definite 'aargh, my eyeballs are melting' quality about it. Okay, maybe he should have taken a closer look at the noise levels before going wild with the high resolution. Rodney reduced it down to a nice, blocky, basic sixteen colour bands, and tried again.

This time, the shape was obvious. And it turned out it wasn't the ship that had set off the sensors after all - it was what had arrived on board it.

Oh, this was very, very bad.

Rodney reached for the radio he had stashed in the drawer, but when he turned it on, he got nothing but static.


	17. Chapter 17

** XVII **

Okay, his trouble sensor had officially stepped up a notch from 'mildly wigging' to 'seriously wigged'. John hesitated in the doorway of the briefing room, suddenly very, very reluctant to step in. Pretty much the entire population of Atlantis was gathered there to hear the SGC representatives speak.

And not all the SGC representatives were here yet.

Bad, bad feeling. Bad bad bad. He made a sharp decision and swung right.

"Hey. So. I should probably contact Doctor Weir before this meeting goes ahead," he said, raising a finger.

"Of course," Colonel Casey agreed with an easy smile, falling in beside him for a few paces. "I met Doctor Weir when she was in charge at the SGC. Want me to come with you so she can make another positive ID?"

There was just a tiny fraction too much smirk behind the helpful suggestion. John gave a taut smile.

"No-" _way in hell_\- "need. Hey, Bates says he's your buddy, I believe him."

In the face of the evidence, he had no particular problem accepting this man was Benjamin Casey. Whether Benjamin Casey was somebody he could _trust_ was another matter entirely.

"Okay."

To his relief, the Colonel hung back and let John get ahead of him. His pace quickened as he reached the next corner, already plotting what he was going to do once he reached the control room. Contact Weir, have Grodin seal all the transport tubes, block all access to the east pier-

There was a sound like somebody stepping on an electronic keyboard, and blue lightning engulfed him from behind. His nervous system was suddenly out of his control and he dropped like a stone, twitching wildly.

Stunner, John guessed as he hit the deck face-first. Not Wraith - they were more with the numbness and less with the '_yeeouch!_' - but alien-based tech for sure. He tried to stand, but it wasn't happening. The pain signals were quite happily shooting back to his brain, but none of the commands he was trying to give were going the other way. He was helpless.

Maybe his ears were affected too, because the next voice he heard was too heavily distorted to identify. "He is still conscious."

"The Tauri have observed that our zat'nikatels react unpredictably with their physiology." From the direction of the voice, that had to be Casey, but he too was sounding like he'd swallowed a 1980s voice synthesizer. "A second shot will take care of the matter."

"No." Footsteps approached him. "This one has the genetic key to access this city's technology. He may be suitable to use as a host."

Before John could ponder all the less than cheerful interpretations of that, his head was unceremoniously yanked upwards. He couldn't force enough cooperation from his eye muscles to focus, but he thought the man holding him was Doyle. His right hand loomed large in John's vision, something metallic held in the palm.

Then there was heat, and light, and it felt like his brain was melting from the inside out.

And then there was nothing at all.

* * *

"_...patriam... asordo... non paratus... indeo inver... non anquientam..._"

Jon's feverish voice veered from frantic cries to a papery whisper, the words always Ancient, seldom intelligible. The last truly lucid period had been hours ago, but still the translator in Daniel snatched at syllables, tried to draw sense out of disordered babbling. He could pick out themes, at least, if not internal logic: home, assistance, error, reversal...

"Any change?" Sam asked quietly as she slipped into the room. Jack looked up from where he'd been mindlessly spinning a power bar between his hands.

"He remains in a state of high fever," Teal'c rumbled from the corner.

They'd all clustered around Jon, despite the fact there was nothing of any real significance they could do for him. Daniel looked to Sam, although he could already tell they weren't getting any good news.

"The Asgard say this is beyond their expertise," she said. "The only thing they could do would be to put him into stasis, and Ymir isn't sure that would actually halt the progress of the transformation."

"Which one's Ymir?" Jack had to ask.

"The tall one," Daniel supplied, which won him a raised eyebrow. Okay, so among the Asgard 'tall' was more a euphemism for 'half an inch less short', but when you had five near-identical little bald grey guys, you worked with what you had.

"Sir, I think the stasis may be his best option." Sam herded them back on track. "Even if it doesn't slow the degeneration, at least he'll be-"

"No," Jack said, simply but with utter finality.

"Sir, we're still days away from the coordinates for Atlantis," she warned.

"It takes days, it takes days," he said curtly. "No stasis."

Confinement of any kind never sat easily with Jack, whether it was paperwork chaining him to his desk, injuries chaining him to his infirmary bed, or bad guys chaining him to the first thing that was handy. Stasis took even more control from him than that, leaving him not just trapped, but completely helpless until someone on the outside chose to revive him. Daniel still remembered waking up in the Hathor House of Fun four or five years ago - being told he was the only one to have survived, and everyone he knew was decades dead. He could understand full well why Jack wouldn't want to risk that ever again.

Of course, that didn't mean he wasn't selfish enough to shove Jack into a stasis pod kicking and screaming if necessary, privileging his right to have a Jack O'Neill in his life over Jack's right to choose his own destiny. And he knew the rest of SG-1 would back him up on that.

Unfortunately, he had two Jack O'Neills in his life right now, and one was playing guard dog over the other.

"O'Neill. I do not believe your clone can last out several days," Teal'c said starkly.

"Jack, he's getting worse by the hour." Daniel added his voice to the pessimistic chorus.

"It could be just a stage," Jack said stubbornly. "He's had seizures before and come out of them."

He stepped closer to study his clone, resting his hands on the edge of the sleep pod so that the base of one thumb _just_ brushed the side of Jon's forearm. It was such a casual pose that Daniel wouldn't have registered the contact at all if he hadn't noticed earlier how far Jack went out of his way to avoid getting close to his duplicate.

"This isn't the same, General," Sam said, shaking her head. "His temperature's been climbing steadily. I'm worried that a complete molecular breakdown isn't far away. The human body just isn't built to withstand the strain of these kind of changes. Sir, remember Nirrti's machine?"

"Ew." Jack's face darkened as the two of them shared a memory that Daniel wasn't privy to. He knew from mission reports that Nirrti had been one of the Goa'uld taken out during his euphemistically termed 'year off', and that she'd been up to her usual tricks with genetic experimentation, but the graphic details had been buried in paragraphs of scientific speculation.

Jon let out a low, shuddering groan, different in tone to the noises he'd been making before. Jack stepped back to be out of the way as Sam tested the temperature of his forehead. "Sir, I think the fever may have broken," she reported a moment later, looking up.

Jack spread his hands. "See? What did I tell you?"

Daniel wasn't fooled by the show of innocence. "Jack, what did you just do?"

Jack put on an eloquently clueless face. He was persistent, Daniel had to give him that. Eight years and a promotion to General, and he _still_ wouldn't ditch the dumb act that not one of them had ever been fooled by.

"I have observed instances of telepathic communication between O'Neill and his clone," Teal'c put in, earning him twin stares from Daniel and Sam. Neither of them bothered asking why he hadn't shared that fact earlier. They both knew.

Daniel had many thoughts about the nature of loyalty, religious indoctrination and attitudes to faith, but they would remain forever unvoiced. He'd died, fought gods, and defied the Ascended, but nothing could make him prepared for the likely reactions of both parties to the suggestion that Jack might be Teal'c's god-substitute.

The god-substitute in question was pouting like a four-year-old who'd been denied a puppy.

"Thanks, T," he said somewhat bitterly.

Sam was busy checking the Asgard equivalent of a vital signs monitor on the side of the pod. "That was more than just a conversation. All his stats have improved... so far as I can tell, he's just asleep."

"You healed him," Daniel realised. "Just like you did for Bra'tac when you had the knowledge of the Ancients before."

"Which means this is progressing _way_ faster in you than we'd originally envisioned," Sam said seriously. "Sir, at this rate, you're both going to be in critical condition before we even reach Atlantis."

"And we have yet to determine whether anything of use remains there," Teal'c reminded them. For all they knew, the Atlantis expedition had gated in to find the city ruined, and died or remained trapped there with no power to get home.

Jack threw up his hands. "Okay, Carter - give me options," he demanded. "And _don't_ say stasis!"

There was a rustle of cloth, and they all turned as Jack's clone swung his legs down from the pod. His skin tone was doing a disturbing impression of Asgard colours and he was visibly shaky, but he held himself upright with O'Neill determination.

"Jon?" Daniel said. Jon met his gaze with eyes that were not so much unfocused as... removed, as if he was looking at things on a slightly different plane to the rest of them.

"_Movus indeo scrutat_," he said hoarsely.

Daniel's brain kicked into gear as he tested and discarded possible Latin roots. "Er, he said-"

"-To let him take a look at the engines." Jack beat him to it.

Oh, this was not good.

* * *

Rodney, if he could see Radek now, would be laughing.

Radek did not consider himself an absent-minded scientist. The stereotype was absurd. Nobody who worked with electrical equipment, chemicals, or other such potentially lethal materials could ever be absent-minded. They were simply, at times... atypical in their priorities.

Like now, for instance. Many people would question why Radek might have been over on the far side of Atlantis, attempting to uncover more secrets of the Ancient medical scanner, at a time when such momentous events were in motion. A fellow scientist, however, would understand fully what happened when one had an intriguing reading and a spare half hour to work with. He had planned to head back well before the official SGC-attended debriefing was due to begin.

But the anomalous reading had taken time to reproduce, and then he'd had a flash of inspiration that had to be turned into code before it faded from his mind, and then there had seemed to be just time to test it, but testing had led to debugging...

He swore quietly to himself, secure in the knowledge that no one would understand him even if they were around to hear, and scurried faster. Yes, Rodney would be laughing indeed. Or else furious. A meeting that Rodney would have chewed his own foot off to attend, and Radek was going to miss the beginning of it.

In his haste, he was not taking the precautions that he usually took even when Atlantis was not known to be under attack. Therefore, the hands that grabbed him and pulled him into a side avenue came as an unpleasant surprise.

"Radek!" The voice was reassuringly familiar, but not one he should be hearing here and now.

Radek turned on his captor with a frown. "Rodney. You are supposed to be in the infirmary."

"Oh, don't start with all that," he said, waving a hand impatiently. "This is far more important. Hold still." He produced, to Radek's confusion, one of the handheld scanners off-world teams used on mineral surveys, and ran it over Radek's head and shoulders, relaxing in response to its readings.

Radek ignored this peculiar behaviour in favour of the more important issue. "Rodney, you are still infected with the parasites! You will undo all Doctor Beckett's work, and then you will end up confined to your sick bed for even longer."

"Trust me, the spores in my lungs are the least of our parasite worries. Look at this." He spun a laptop screen Radek's way.

"Abstract art. Very pretty," Radek said dryly. He tilted his head this way and that, trying to make some sense of the picture. Interesting. That looked like a representation of the human nervous system, or perhaps a network of blood vessels... biology was not really his field. But if that was a human body, then the strange, snake-like shape tangled up with the brain and spine... "What is that? I've never seen anything like it."

"I have." Rodney closed his laptop up grimly. "It's a Goa'uld. There are five of them here, and they're in Lieutenant Colonel Casey and his team. This isn't contact from home. It's an invasion."

* * *

Okay, this proved it. Sheppard and McKay were the jinx.

Ford had been tensed for a confrontation over the four local days of the negotiations. It had all the classic signs. Friendly natives. Trade agreements on the verge of being signed. Even a feast in their honour. Feasts in their honour _inevitably_ ended with them being drugged, slapped around, and forced to run for their lives. It was, like, the rule of the Pegasus Galaxy. And their home galaxy, too, if even half the stories he'd heard about SG-1 were true.

And yet... zip. Nada. Not so much as a single mutter about not trusting the off-worlders.

It was actually kind of creepy. Teyla and Doctor Weir had negotiated for things and made nice, and the natives had... given them things, and been nice.

Weird.

The lack of action had done more to rattle his nerves than an actual conflict. Teyla and Weir were both pleasant company, but they were also, well... dignified and mature. After being accustomed to Sheppard and McKay bickering over everything from mission priorities to sleeping arrangements to what was in the suspicious native stew they'd just eaten, it was a little bit like going someplace with your schoolteachers.

He was looking forward to being home.

Ford punched in the gate address on the DHD, but paused just before completing it, realising there was somebody else along who didn't get to do this very often. "Doctor Weir?"

She gave him a warm smile. "Thank you, Lieutenant." She stepped forward and decisively pressed the panel to enter the address. There was the familiar _whoosh_ and outward spray as the wormhole connected.

"Atlantis, this is Weir," she said into her radio. "We're coming through with trade goods. Is the gate room clear?"

The fraction of a pause before any response was enough to get his hackles up. "Uh, negative, Doctor Weir," said a voice that Ford couldn't quite place. "We have a... slight problem with the gate here. We're running diagnostics, but the gate may not be clear for travel for another ten hours."

"Understood." Doctor Weir nodded gravely, even though there was no visual link. "Is anyone else off-world?"

Again, just enough of a silence to make him antsy. This was information that the gate techs shouldn't even need to think about. "Uh, no, Ma'am, just your team."

"Okay." She relaxed a little. "We'll make contact again in..." She eyed the colour of the sky, judging the local day and night cycle. "...Fourteen hours. Weir out."

She shut off the radio, and a few moments later, the wormhole disconnect itself.

"I will go and explain to Aethred that we will be staying another night," Teyla said. Ford halted her with a quick gesture.

"Something's not right here."

Weir raised an eyebrow. "What's wrong, Lieutenant?"

"Did either of you happen to recognise that voice?" he checked.

Teyla smiled in puzzlement, but shook her head slightly. "I am afraid the accents of those from your and Doctor McKay's countries all sound most alike to me," she apologised.

"Well, I know it wasn't Peter," Weir said, with a wry twist to her mouth. "Could it have been Doctor Marlowe?"

Ford shook his head. "No. I kind of thought I recognised it from somewhere... but the thing is, I'd swear it's not one our gate techs." The voices that told you whether it was safe to come home or you were about to be splattered into a layer of molecules all over the defence shield were ones you soon came to know very well.

"Perhaps they are busy with the gate diagnostics," Teyla suggested. "You cannot be expected to know the voices of every person in Atlantis."

Ford shook his head miserably. "I don't know, I just..." His mind was trying to come up with a context for that voice, and it was a _wrong_ context. Not Genii, thankfully - his first grim thought when it came to stealth invasions. It had been a solid mid-west accent, not the kind of thing you heard around the Pegasus Galaxy outside of their own expedition, but still, something...

Where did he know that voice from?

Doctor Weir touched his shoulder. "I'm sure everything's fine."

"Yeah."

All the same, he thought he might just make a few extra preparations before they headed on home tomorrow morning.

* * *

"Looks like they've got everybody holed up in the briefing room," Rodney reported, viewing the city's life sign readings on his laptop screen.

"If I had not been delayed, I would be with them," Radek said, and let out his breath in a huff. He owed his own distractedness a debt, it seemed. "Is there any way of distinguishing our people from the Goa'uld?"

"Not on this thing." He glowered at it. "It's the same as the handheld units. It can't tell human beings from Wraith - or, for that matter, chipmunks. With Goa'uld hosts being so close to human parameters in the first place, we haven't got a prayer of even jury-rigging it."

"Very shoddy design," Radek agreed. "We assume there are five Goa'uld, yes?"

"Probably. But only one of them's likely to be a big cheese. Goa'uld don't like to share power. The other four could be Jaffa, but I don't think so. I doubt our people could be brainwashed thoroughly enough to avoid suspicion. Most likely they're young symbiotes, given SGC members as hosts to act as backup for the deception. Damn! We should have sent them all for MRIs as soon as they arrived. Standard SGC procedure. Why didn't we think of it?"

"Because we are accustomed to our enemies being blue and scary," Radek reminded him.

"Or plain old human beings." Rodney scowled at the context-free blips milling around his screen.

"Which Goa'uld do you think we are dealing with?" Radek asked as he contemplated subtle ways of entering the computer system. There was no way to know how much control the invaders had of the system already, and whether they would notice an intrusion.

"It's got to be a System Lord," Rodney said. "No minor Goa'uld would be able to do what's been done with that hybrid ship."

"It is some years beyond even our capabilities, I think," Radek agreed seriously.

"Months," Rodney corrected, giving him a stern eyebrow. "The Goa'uld aren't smarter than us, they just need fewer coffee breaks. And there weren't that many high-stakes players left when we left the galaxy. Let's see... Osiris? No, wait, SG-1 dealt with him - her? - and freed the host. There's Yu... but I don't recall him ever using Ancient technology, and anyway, last I heard he'd gone ga-ga. No, I think there are two main contenders." His face darkened. "It's got to be either Baal, or Anubis."

Radek was aware of the terrible threat that Anubis had posed. "Then we should be hoping for Baal, yes?"

If anything, Rodney's expression grew grimmer. "I wouldn't be so sure about that. Did you hear about what happened to General O'Neill?"

He had not, but the circumspect nature of the reference was troubling enough. When nastiness was so bad that Rodney McKay failed to ramble about it in excruciating detail, it was time to be very worried indeed. However, before he could inquire further, a command on the list he had accessed caught his attention.

"Ah. McKay. I believe I have found something interesting." The door to a small, innocuous chamber close to the gate room had been sealed.

Rodney leaned over to look, and understood the significance immediately.

"They've taken a prisoner."


	18. Chapter 18

** XVIII **

Carson tended to the injured as best he could.

There wasn't a great deal to be done, perhaps fortunately. He wasn't sure their captors would have accepted it so readily if he'd done much more than check pulses and make people comfortable. The energy weapons they'd used to put down rebellion he recognised by reputation only: a Goa'uld ribbon device, and the wee stunner thingies they called zats. The SGC's Chief Medical Officer had provided him with copies of their data before he left - the only reference material available for medical threats that might be encountered on other planets - but he hadn't committed any specifics to memory.

He'd rather hoped they wouldn't be meeting the Goa'uld in the Pegasus Galaxy.

Carson himself knew of Earth's long-standing enemy from second-hand reports only, but others in the Atlantis expedition had more personal experience. The moment the alleged 'engineer' Doyle had stalked in with glowing eyes and declared himself to be the god Baal, Sergeant Howard had stood up and called him out as a Goa'uld - and been blasted with the ribbon device for her troubles.

The other four members of the supposed SG team had quickly and efficiently used their zats to take down and disarm Bates's security forces and other potential threats. Carson's only consolation was that Sheppard didn't number among those taken down. Unfortunately, that could well be a sign he'd been dealt with separately, as the biggest threat to the false god's authority.

At least Elizabeth was safely away on another planet, and Rodney secreted in the infirmary. Carson just prayed he'd had the sense to obey medical advice and stay put. Perhaps the Goa'uld would overlook him tucked away there.

The rest of them had been left here in the conference room to 'contemplate' and prepare to accept Baal as their god. Carson couldn't imagine what Baal thought he was playing at. Surely he didn't think they could be induced to true worship? He must know that the people of Earth were far more advanced than the low-technology cultures the Goa'uld made it their usual business to oppress. Why bother with the god pretence at all?

Unless it wasn't a pretence. Perhaps the Goa'uld truly did believe they were gods.

The Wraith might be arrogant, but it was the learned arrogance of a race of predators who'd found little to fear from their prey. It might amuse them to see fear or futile defiance, but in truth they cared no more for the inner feelings of their victims than a fisherman did for his catch. Humans were food to them, no more and no less.

The Goa'uld didn't feed, they enslaved. They built empires and raised armies, stole the beautiful to use as hosts and ruthlessly crushed out any signs of initiative or advancement. While the Wraith simply slaughtered, the Goa'uld took over minds and souls - and made the people sing their praises for the privilege.

Both of them in the same galaxy was a disaster waiting to happen.

Carson couldn't help but remember that humans weren't the first race the Goa'uld had used as hosts - and genetically, the Unas were not exactly humanity's closest cousins. If a leap that big had been made before, could it be made again?

He was probably the closest thing this galaxy had to an expert on the internal workings of the Wraith, and what that expertise told him was chilling. Because while aspects of the Wraith were very alien, they were basically hybrid creatures... and he'd already discovered their bodies contained a quite surprising proportion of human DNA.

The Goa'uld had traded up once before, when they'd discovered humanity made better hosts for them. What happened if they discovered there was a new race on the block with even more impressive abilities?

* * *

Some instinct - or perhaps pure dumb luck - woke him at the horribly familiar sound of a Wraith stunner. John rolled sideways on reflex, and in his dazed state smacked into the wall. He thought for a moment he was seeing stars, then realised it was just the play of light over the patterned ceiling. Boy, Atlantis had some pretty ceilings...

The door to his cell swished open, and moments later the irritated face of McKay loomed into view. "Major, you're being rescued, do you think you could possibly manage to keep up with events?"

The answer to that was apparently 'no', for he staggered like a drunk as McKay and Doctor Zelenka attempted to help him out. His head was killing him, but he didn't think this was the right time to be asking for an aspirin.

He almost tripped over a prone body on his way out. "That's... Hertzberg?" he identified, after a moments' pause.

"It used to be," McKay said tersely. "Come on."

"Shouldn't we... take him captive or something?" John said hazily, hesitating. Damn brain. He and it seemed to be operating at a greater distance than they usually were.

"There is no time," Zelenka informed him. "He may recover from the stunner blast at any moment."

"Hey, no... Those things keep you out for hours." He'd had more than one unpleasant brush with them himself.

"You - not him," McKay corrected. "He's a Goa'uld."

"...Okay." John had no idea what that word was, but it had way more vowels than he could deal with right now. "Uh..."

McKay shoved him into a transporter and sighed explosively. "Major, did you do any background reading _at all_ before you signed on for this mission?"

John blinked a few times. "There were assigned texts?"

The transporter flashed them over to a new location, and the two scientists ushered him out.

"The Goa'uld were a threat encountered by the SGC when they first started going through the Stargate," McKay lectured. "They're a race of parasitic aliens that use human beings for hosts."

He raised an eyebrow. Or possibly both of them. His forehead still felt kind of numb and tingly. "Like tapeworm?"

"Sentient tapeworm. With super healing powers, a serious god complex, and a penchant for stealing technology."

"Ah." He nodded wisely. His head felt like it was only loosely connected at the neck.

McKay and Zelenka hustled him into a small lab on the outer fringe of the area that the physicists had adopted as their own - an area occasionally known as Blow-Up Alley. The scientists usually used these smaller rooms for working on the things that they knew to be volatile.

As opposed to the things that they only suspected to be volatile. Or the ones they didn't suspect of being volatile at all until suddenly, _boom_.

Really, it was a surprise when something they brought back to study actually turned out to be inert.

"Uh... why are we in here?" John asked, eyeing the purple splotches on three of the lab walls uneasily.

"This is the room where Hockley tried to open that orb thing we found on the planet of the giant caterpillars," McKay told him.

"Ah." A memorable mission, that. "That was the thing that tried to terraform the lab?"

"Giant purple fungus was causing false readings on life signs detectors," Zelenka elaborated, already tapping away at a laptop. "Doctor Simpson devised temporary shielding measures to stop marines turning up every fifteen minutes to check for alien invaders."

"So we're shielded from detection?"

"If they're just using the standard visual display, yes," said McKay, working in tandem with Zelenka. Neither of them bothered to actually explain to him what they were doing. "If they set the system to do a deep scan for discrepancies we'll show up pretty quickly."

"Then let's hope they don't understand Ancient computers very well," John said, sitting down. His vision was still swimming a little and occasionally flashing migraine colours. He was pretty sure that if Beckett was around, he wouldn't be allowed to be upright. "Any idea what that metal glove thing was they used to fry my brains with?"

"It's a Goa'uld ribbon device," McKay said.

"Catchy."

"The Goa'uld are able to absorb naquadah - or produce it, or excrete it, or something. I don't know. Biology." He handwaved that as unimportant. "Some of their technology can only be activated by a host with naquadah particles in their bloodstream. There's some speculation that the original race the Goa'uld stole the technology from were able to crudely reverse engineer an Ancient device. They used the presence of naquadah as the trigger factor rather than test for the ATA gene."

"Yes." Zelenka nodded to himself. "I have read Doctor Lee and Doctor Carmichael's theories that naquadah particles somehow amplify and transmit specific kinds of electrical signals generated in the brain. Very interesting."

McKay let out a dissatisfied huff. "Doctor Lee? Please. The man's a moron. I had to spend months disentangling his DHD equations when I was over at Area 51. And don't even get me started on his laughable approach to classifying recovered technology... what is his degree _in_, anyway? Does anybody know?"

John should probably be stepping in right now to talk about... plans, and other such tactical stuff, but he was a little preoccupied tilting his head this way and that, trying to figure out whether the little green-pink supernova hovering next to the light was a free-floating alien lifeform or an afterimage from the ribbon device. From the fact that the parts of the room he wasn't immediately focused on tended to assume a consistency best described as 'weebly', he was leaning toward the latter.

So when there was a bright white light and the hallway outside the lab was suddenly full of people, he just blinked quietly at them for a few moments. Then he reached backwards with both hands, to tug on the bottom of McKay's shirt and tap Zelenka.

"Say. By any chance, do either of you guys see...?"

One of the people, who looked suspiciously like Doctor Daniel Jackson, gave him a friendly little wave.

* * *

The hallway Jack found himself now standing in was simultaneously completely new to him and as familiar as his own backyard. This was, in itself, both kind of bizarre and utterly unsurprising.

This whole downloaded alien knowledge thing was really getting old.

Beside him his clone sagged slightly, and Jack automatically did _something_ that he couldn't have classified if he'd tried. Just... reached out and steadied him, only without actually moving.

The rest of SG-1 - the whole of SG-1, he ruthlessly corrected himself - had twigged that there was telepathic communication going on, but they didn't really know the half of it. He and his clone weren't so much communicating as sharing space; they had separate thoughts, but there was only one single mind, sloshing between the two of them like water. He remembered his months as a General just as clearly as he remembered spending those same months in high school; just as clearly as he remembered Atlantis.

"_Patria_," his clone said softly, touching the wall, and Jack thought _Huh?_ at the same time as he understood _Home_.

This place resonated on the home frequency, but it wasn't home, and he wasn't an Ancient however much his braincells wanted to argue that, so Jack crammed it all in the box marked 'weird crap', and focused back on the here and now.

Here, a hallway in the city of Atlantis. Now, about thirty seconds since Ymir had pointed out three travelling life-form blips, said in his melodic Asgard voice, "We will transport you here where the population density is low enough to prevent collision," and kicked their butts the hell off the _Skidbladnir_ without further discussion.

Jack absently threat assessed the identities of the three blips - scientist, scientist, that Sheppard guy, none of them pointing anything dangerous at him - and then turned to Daniel. "Hey! They're just gonna dump us here?"

"Bragi's given us a distress beacon in case we need to signal them for an emergency early collection," Carter said helpfully. "Otherwise they'll swing by and pick us up on their way back out of the galaxy."

"Generous," Jack said sarcastically. Goddammit, he _always_ hated this setup. Helicopter, tel'tak, Asgard explorer vessel... it made no difference. When the guy you were relying on to pull your butt out of the fire had anything else on his priority list aside from that pick-up, it was _baaaad_ news. With a capital 'baa' - because it was a pretty sure bet the folks in charge were only too happy to let the guys on the ground be sacrificial lambs.

Of course, Daniel had to just blithely ignore all the tactical implications and jump right in to defend the politicking. "Oh, er, well, yes it is, Jack, actually. Considering how badly the Asgard's resources are overstretched, it's a mark of huge respect that they were willing to make a detour to bring us here at all. In fact, to be brutally honest, I'm pretty sure the only reason this is happening at all is because Thor has a bit of a thing for you."

Okay, _that_ got his attention. "Thor is a four foot tall grey alien of indeterminate gender with no genitals!"

Daniel wiggled his eyebrows. "I didn't say it was an easily classifiable thing."

Teal'c raised his own right eyebrow half a millimetre. Jack kept his dignity by studiously avoiding his team's gazes.

Rescuing him, Carter turned and flashed a bright smile at the three men clustered in the- _(level three biocontainment chamber)_ -room beside them. "Rodney. Radek! Major."

Jack, an expert in Carter smiles, watched it fluctuate from wry affection to genuine pleasure to polite acknowledgement. The little fuzzy haired dude in the glasses was definitely feeling like the luckiest man in the room right now. Jack knew the other two but not him, so Carter's warm reception helped him to relax. McKay, not his favourite person; Sheppard, unpredictable; but still, not the worst possible choice of first contact situation.

McKay's face was readable as a baby book as he telegraphed surprise, pleasure at the sight of Carter, slightly disappointed jealousy when 'Radek' got the bigger beam, smugness when Sheppard got less of a greeting than both of them.

Sheppard looked drunk, not to mention slightly sunburned. What the hell kind of ship was Sumner running out here?

As both groups eyeballed each other, Sheppard sidled over to McKay. "Should we worry about them being compromised?" he asked.

"No, they seem pretty much like SG-1 to me," McKay said, snapping his mouth shut from the 'o' it had fallen into. "General. We have something of a problem," he said. "The Goa'uld have just arrived in Atlantis."

Jack instantly reclassified 'drunk and sunburned' to 'ribbon-deviced'. Oh, _damn_.

_Every_ time. Pick-up team saunters off: nice, friendly, no-risk mission instantly goes to hell. Every. _Single._ Time. Why did nobody listen to him about these things?

He exchanged a look with his clone, and the same unpleasant, obvious thought flew both ways through the space between them. _Baal._

Who else could it be?

Sheppard half narrowed his unfocused eyes, and then raised a wavering finger. "Um. Did somebody just say something about... balls?" he asked uncertainly.

* * *

Radek had not had much opportunity to get to know the members of SG-1, either separately or together. He had of course consulted with the lovely Colonel Carter on several projects, most often through email but occasionally face to face. Daniel Jackson he had met at the Antarctic site and found a pleasant conversationalist, although prone to be distracted by the half dozen other conversations he was having at the same time.

General O'Neill, Radek knew of through his two conflicting reputations: the superhuman military hero who left no one behind, and the overgrown child whose continued presence in the rigid confines of the USAF command structure mystified many. Radek's own concept of O'Neill, however, would be forever influenced by the near-funereal image of him frozen in the Ancient stasis booth in Antarctica. In the days before they had known if he would be possible to revive, even the scientists assigned to study the unit had tiptoed around him, nervous and respectful before that unseeing gaze.

Once, Radek would not have believed there were people who would voluntarily destroy their own mind and be frozen into living death for a fraction of a chance at saving those around them. Now he knew many of them - and yet, the more such heroes he met, the greater his esteem for each of them grew.

The other two members of the group, he did not know at all. The Jaffa warrior Teal'c was impossible to mistake for anybody else, but the young man was a mystery. He bore a strong resemblance to O'Neill, but Radek was uncertain whether the General had living family, and did not think it politic to ask.

Whatever the boy's identity, he was clearly unwell. Even as Radek took in his grey-toned, sweat-soaked skin and ragged breathing, he staggered and abruptly clutched his head.

"What's wrong with him?" asked Rodney, always to be relied upon to attack such things directly.

"It's too loud," said O'Neill, with a strange inflection Radek didn't quite understand. Apparently Major Sheppard did, however, for he straightened up and reached out, lightly touching the Ancient terminal their laptops were interfaced with.

An instant later Rodney frowned and O'Neill's shoulder muscles relaxed. Radek himself felt nothing, only saw from an on-screen report that a selection of non-essential systems had just gone offline. Apparently the 'noisy' ones.

He suppressed an unbecoming flicker of jealousy. The gene therapy had not taken with him; it was simply a minor deficiency in his genetic code, no worse than his being short-sighted, and to dwell on it was childish.

Still, to talk to the city with his mind... how could any true scientist not dream of it?

The young man seemed to feel some relief at the reduction in signals, although he still did not look well. He winced and stood up straighter, while Rodney studied him as if... well, as if he was a previously uninteresting person who had suddenly done something to change that status. "Hypersensitivity to gene-activated technology... I've never seen that before, either with the artificially introduced or naturally occurring ATA- who _is_ he?"

He addressed the question to Colonel Carter, earning him twin glares from O'Neill and the boy. Yes, Radek decided, there was most definitely a family resemblance. But neither man made any move to introduce him. Instead, it was Daniel Jackson who spoke up.

"This is... Jon." A great deal of unexplained weight was packed into that simple syllable. "He's... um, kind of the reason we're here."

"He was exposed to an Ancient medical device intended to stabilise victims of the plague," Colonel Carter clarified. "We think that the presence of the ATA gene created a false positive when it scanned him to see if he was an Ancient, causing it to attempt to 'restore' him to wildly inaccurate parameters and leading toward eventual cellular breakdown."

"Yeah. That's what we think," O'Neill said wryly.

Radek had followed that, but it took Sheppard a moment longer to decode it. "He's transforming into an Ancient?"

"No," snapped O'Neill, at the same time as Jon blurted "_Non sum!_", Colonel Carter smiled and said "Essentially," and Daniel Jackson said "Ah... in a sense." A flurry of looks were exchanged between the four of them, and Teal'c raised a single eyebrow pointedly. It was the only contribution he had made to the conversation so far.

"Where's Beckett?" O'Neill turned to the three Atlantis residents, recovering control of the conversation.

"Carson?" Rodney asked. O'Neill narrowed his eyes.

"No, Sam Beckett," he said scathingly.

Radek grinned. "Ah, yes. _Quantum Leap_." He believed there were some episodes floating around the Atlantis network somewhere. If there was one thing a large body of scientists could be relied upon to sneak aboard - aside from coffee, of course - it was pirated science fiction. Surprisingly, Teal'c appeared to get the reference, while Daniel Jackson was left looking perplexed.

Carson, yes, of course. While Radek and his fellow engineers and computer scientists had learned much of how the gene interfaced with the technology, Doctor Beckett was their only real expert on how it interfaced with the human body. Here in the Pegasus Galaxy, with access to the largest available group of ATA carriers, a ready supply of Ancient technologies, and far less in the way of medical regulations, he had doubtless amassed much more knowledge than any of the researchers back on Earth. If anyone could help Jon, it would be him.

Which, unfortunately, presented something of a problem.

Rodney had turned back to his laptop, and now called up a display of the city's life signs readings. "Well, if you want Carson, I can pinpoint his position for you." He spun the screen around, so they could all see the densely packed mass of blips that was the captive population of Atlantis. "He's under Goa'uld guard, somewhere in there."

* * *

Human forms, Kaermec had discovered, provided a wealth of sensations that a naked symbiote could only dream of while it was in its pouch. This abundance of feeling, as it turned out, was a lot more enjoyable when the sensations in question were pleasant.

He had been numb, and now he hurt.

Kaermec, like all of his brethren, was possessed of the genetic memory of all Goa'uld in his line, but that knowledge told him nothing of the weapon that had taken him down. A rifle through the weakly protesting mind of Hertzberg yielded nothing of use, either. It must be a technology unique to this galaxy.

That, at least, was one small bright spot. A morsel of knowledge that he could bring before Baal, to offset the shame of having lost the prisoner he was assigned to guard.

It rankled, being subordinate to Baal. Why should Baal have the right to lead? He was old and weak, ripe to be supplanted. Soon, soon, Kaermec would end this charade of obedience and take his rightful place as ruler. But for now, Baal's knowledge of the Ancient computer system was of use. Once that had been cracked open and the city brought under their control, he would be free to make his move.

Perhaps it was as well that the prisoner had escaped. Kaermec permitted his host body to display a small smile. Yes, this was not a failure, this was wisdom. If he allowed Baal to take a new host who possessed the city's genetic key, it would only give him an advantage over his fellow Goa'uld. It made far more sense to let the host run free until Kaermec was in a position to take control of it.

Everything was falling into place perfectly. And this should not be a surprise - after all, was he not destined to be god over Atlantis?

Unfortunately, there was the small but annoying matter of dealing with Baal first. His soon-to-be-vanquished leader was in the Chappa'ai control centre, lounging in his seat as he studied the Ancient text on the screen. No doubt he thought he looked carefree and regal, whereas Kaermec saw him as he really was: merely slovenly, and undignified. Hardly a posture befitting a god.

He bowed low in order to disguise his urge to sneer. Human facial expressions and body language were strange things to control, intimately linked with emotions. One had to be aware of what one was thinking and make a conscious effort not to display it. Most inconvenient.

"Lord Baal, I regret that the prisoner has escaped. It seems that Tauri have acquired new forms of technology not seen in our own galaxy."

Baal smiled unconcernedly. "It is of no importance."

"Yes, Lord Baal." No doubt his 'superior' was only saving face by pretending so. How pathetic. "Do you wish me to apprehend him?"

"He is no longer required," Baal said curtly. He sneered. "The Tauri's attempts at data protection are primitive. Their secrets are mine to peruse. I have found something much more interesting than Major Sheppard." He turned one of the Tauri display devices to reveal the image of a nondescript human male. "Bring me this man."

Kaermec bowed again. "As you command."

For the moment, at least.


	19. Chapter 19

** XIX **

Although Sam had always - perhaps not so secretly - revelled in being the one who could pull out the last-minute solution when everyone else was at a loss, she had to admit there was a different kind of joy in working with others who were just as advanced in the field. The scientists she worked with at the SGC were clever, thorough, and frequently inspired, but McKay and Zelenka were brilliant.

Brilliant, but... quirky.

Fortunately, there was nothing like eight years on SG-1 to prepare you for quirky.

She knew enough of McKay to recognise that running his mouth off was his default setting, and Zelenka seemed to be taking the frequent berating in good humour, so she tuned it out while she familiarised herself with the computer system. Jon was stretched out awkwardly on the floor of the lab behind them, shivering in feverish sleep with Teal'c's jacket as a blanket. Sam knew his condition had to be bad if he hadn't argued being left behind to rest.

The rest of the team had gone off with Sheppard to scout out the lay of the land. They hadn't banked on being dropped into the middle of a Goa'uld invasion - but it hadn't exactly been a surprise, either. Since when did anything ever go smoothly for SG-1?

So now they'd divided their forces. She would have liked to be with the rest of SG-1, but she knew she could do more good here in their makeshift headquarters, getting familiar with the city's computer system. The expedition had clearly got a respectable handle on it, but there was still a huge chunk of Ancient programming untranslated, and their current efforts were hampered by the fact that they weren't sure how well Baal could monitor computer activity.

"The Goa'uld have been moving our people into more secure holding areas," Zelenka said, studying a readout. "There are small pockets - eight, ten, twelve. We have little hope of predicting which one Doctor Beckett is held in."

"We can't afford to hit them all," Sam warned. "They're too widely spaced, and with up to five Goa'uld on patrol..."

"The lead Goa'uld appears to be remaining in the control centre," Zelenka pointed out.

"Which is worse than having him roaming the halls!" McKay said, exasperated. "I can't tell how much of our security encoding he's cracked, but he can get the basic systems up for sure. He's probably looking at the exact same set of readings we are. With some time I can figure out a jammer, but the second we get close enough to a cell to blank out the occupants, he'll realise what we're up to. We'll only get one shot at this."

"So we are back to the problem of isolating Doctor Beckett." Zelenka sighed and pushed back his hair.

"It can't be done. The Goa'uld, we at least have non-human parameters to work with... the Scottish, oddly enough, are not sufficiently distinct to show up as alien lifeforms!"

Zelenka sat up straighter, and raised a finger. "Ah. But he does have one area of distinction, does he not?"

McKay lowered his eyebrows. "We can't configure the biometric sensors to search for a single gene. And even if we could, our best detection method so far is 'hey, hold this and see if it lights up'. You're talking about exhaustive checking of the entire genetic code of every member of the expedition."

"I am just saying, it's a possible avenue of attack-"

"A _stupid_ avenue of attack-"

Years of Daniel and the General had trained Sam to block out bickering, so it took a moment for her to realise when the tone of it abruptly changed. She raised her head, and saw figures scrolling on the Ancient display screen. McKay turned around and glared at her imperiously.

"What did you touch?"

She glared right back. "I'm not even connected to the system." Somehow, McKay's irritable condescension had taken on more charm in memory than it did when he was sitting a few feet away.

"Then who-"

They all turned to see Jon sitting up in his makeshift bed. His eyes were trained on the display screen, although not completely focused. She saw him absently-mindedly flex his hand, as if handling invisible controls.

"What's he doing? Whose bright idea was it to-? Hey, kid! Leave the computer system to the grown-ups, okay? No, uh, mind-touching without permission."

Jon paused in his concentration long enough to give McKay a contemptuous look, then resumed mentally cycling through machine code. The text was scrolling too fast for Sam to have read even if she understood Ancient.

Zelenka, however, seemed to recognise the general pattern of it. "I think this is the list of sensor-related subroutines I was just looking at." He turned to frown at Jon. "Please, what are you attempting to find?"

Jon seemed to take the polite approach somewhat better than McKay's, and paused again to explain.

Unfortunately, what came out of his mouth was, "_Speculum pestilentum utilus possus cogitam_."

* * *

"Tauri, _kree_! Come with me."

Carson was yanked out of the crowd with no more warning than those surly words. The Goa'uld had been gradually escorting small groups of prisoners away from the briefing room - he hoped for incarceration in more manageable numbers rather than to meet a horrible death - but he was the first one to be singled out specifically. Carson swallowed hard, and wished he'd taken the chance to visit the little boys' room before their imprisonment had started.

Several nearby marines nearby tensed to come to his aid, but Bates quelled them with a look. He followed it up with a narrow-eyed expression that was probably meant to communicate something, but Carson was too petrified to make much sense of it.

_If that's a warning not to put up a fight, it's entirely redundant, laddie!_ His knees were so jellified he wouldn't have been able to if he'd known how. And his escort was Major Hertzberg, the most physically intimidating of all the Goa'uld hosts. Not that it made much difference. Even the wee lass with the pretty long hair was terrifying with that grating voice coming out of her mouth.

He was horribly aware that he'd only done one thing that distinguished him from his fellow prisoners - attempted to tend to those 'punished' for standing up to the Goa'uld. Did medical help for the defiant count as defiance?

The Goa'uld weren't big on defiance. Hertzberg's face was impassive and his body language impatient as he hustled Carson out of the briefing room and in the direction of the gate room.

Oh, shite, he was going to be executed as an example. Not that he'd make a very good one, because he'd probably blubber and beg for his life. Being strong and witty in the face of adversity was really more Major Sheppard's area.

Where was Major Sheppard, anyway? Maybe he was at this very moment planning a heroic last-minute rescue. Those were also very much Sheppard's style. And Rodney was possibly still free, and in possession of his laptop despite being confined to the infirmary. A small and lonely flag of hope started to wave above the stark sea of gibbering terror.

That hope died as he was marched into the control room and came face to face with Baal.

Carson had faced monsters, thugs and madmen - none of them very bravely, but he'd done it. Baal was different. The god persona he'd adopted for who could guess how many centuries fitted him like a glove, and he was collected, elegant, and _charming_.

Carson would be the first to admit that he was an old-fashioned boy about some things, but in his opinion, when you looked into the face of pure evil, it should be snarling, raving, or cackling insanely. It shouldn't have a twinkle in its eye and a smile that reminded you of your Uncle Patrick.

Come to think of it, he'd never really liked Uncle Patrick.

Baal looked up from the laptop screen he'd been perusing, for all the world like a busy executive who'd just had an underling escorted in. "Ah. Good. Doctor Beckett. You are the developer of the science your people call gene therapy?"

Carson's mouth went dry, and his tongue stuck to the roof of it. Oh, bloody hell. He hadn't been expecting _this_. He stuttered out some meaningless sound, but Baal clearly had the facts already.

"Your science is crude... but then so are these bodies." Baal held out his arms and inspected his own like a man trying on a new suit. "I wish you to provide my host with the activation gene." Though couched as an airily spoken request, it was unquestionably a command.

"Erm..." Carson stared at him, tongue-tied. Baal apparently mistook the rabbit in the headlights look for bold defiance, and his eyes narrowed.

"Of course, should you refuse, I will be forced to take a new host from among the population who possess the naturally occurring gene." He gave Carson an offensive once-over, and dismissed him just as quickly, curling his lip. "Sheppard, perhaps, would be adequate..." he mused, "if something could be done about his hair. But I find my current host pleasing to me, and if I am forced to change unnecessarily, I shall be most annoyed."

Carson gulped, and Baal leaned forward, all trace of the jovial personality gone.

"Either you will prepare for me the gene retrovirus, or be prepared to sacrifice one of your companions to be my new host. Choose."

His eyes glowed.

* * *

John had met a lot of Generals in his varied and colourful career. Many of them had been drinkers, most of them had been fat, and nearly all of them had been shouting at him for stepping outside the lines of their neatly typed, colour-coded, wholly impractical battle plans. As a rule, they were men who'd seen plenty of action when they were lower down the ranks - seen it, because they were the ones standing at the back with field glasses while the commanders who actually took part in it fought and bled and died.

He'd met O'Neill briefly, and judged him both unusually fit and unusually straightforward for a General, even a freshly minted one-star. He'd heard a lot of rumours about the actions of O'Neill the Colonel, and registered the awe with which solid, sensible officers mentioned him. But still, the pieces had really only come together into a vague sense of satisfaction stroke bitterness that at least _some_ people were lucky enough to get a CO who understood what it was like out there. When O'Neill had insisted on being part of the expedition to scout out the Goa'uld invaders' ship, he'd felt the familiar sinking feeling of having to drag dead weight brass around and kept them out of trouble.

That feeling had lasted for about seven seconds, most of which were employed just watching the man pass down a hallway. O'Neill moved with the kind of precision that you could have called textbook if it wasn't damn obvious that the _last_ place it had been learned was sitting down with a book.

And with Teal'c and Jackson along for the ride, John felt uncomfortably like a green Lieutenant shoehorned into a long-established unit. These guys had served together for the better part of a decade, and it showed.

Since they'd come to Atlantis, John had been accustomed to being in command of all things military, and he had to admit, being kicked back down to the junior leagues kinda rankled. The truth was, he'd never been so hot on that whole 'taking orders' thing, no matter how worthy the source. Out in the field, he would always trust his own instincts above someone else's.

Which didn't mean he was dumb enough not to take all available intel.

"There's only five of them. What are we afraid of?" he asked.

The Goa'uld forces were stretched thin, with Baal holed up in the control room and only four underlings to secure a large number of prisoners and an even larger expanse of unfamiliar city. The only one patrolling within scrambling distance of the hybrid ship was Casey. Or whatever the hell alien was walking around wearing his face.

Jackson peered at him earnestly over his glasses. "Well, uh, they're Goa'uld," he said, clearly fishing for how much John knew on that subject.

"Goa'uld symbiotes provide their hosts with many advantages over normal human beings," Teal'c supplied, in a rumbling bass voice that matched his impressive stature.

"They heal fast, they move fast, their senses are enhanced, and they get pissed off real easily," O'Neill rapped out succinctly. "And they get to play with the cool toys." He raised a sceptical eyebrow. "How come you escaped being taken hostage?"

John's forehead was still throbbing, inside and out, from the blast he'd received. "I didn't. I was headed for the control room to make contact with Doctor Weir, so they knocked me out and stashed me in a separate cell. McKay was in the infirmary while this was going down so he managed to grab Zelenka and bust me out."

O'Neill immediately seized on the pertinent tactical information. "Weir's off-world?"

"With Teyla- ah, she's a native ally - and Lieutenant Ford. But I didn't get a message to them. They'll be gating straight in to Baal's hands." He grimaced. "If they haven't already. They were due back not long after the whole coup went down." He didn't have the first clue how much time had passed.

"What about Colonel Sumner?"

The wholly reasonable question hit like a punch to the gut. John reflexively straightened up to a position approximating attention. "Sir, Colonel Sumner was killed in action shortly after we arrived, sir."

The General narrowed his eyes. "What kind of action?"

O'Neill was not a man who would appreciate the sugar-coating any more than John wanted to give it.

"Our arrival drew the attention of alien hostiles known as the Wraith. They prey on humans and drain the life force out of them. Colonel Sumner was captured and interrogated and I was forced to shoot him." He would give no more self-justification than that.

He almost _wanted_ the angry disgust that should have engendered, but it wasn't forthcoming. O'Neill merely nodded curtly, while Jackson looked grim. Teal'c didn't so much as twitch one way or the other.

"I'll want a full debrief and threat assessment later, but for now, our main priority has to be the Goa'uld. Teal'c, Sheppard, head toward where the prisoners are being held and see what you can see. Daniel, come with me. We'll rendezvous with Carter and the docs and see what they've found out."

O'Neill peeled away without a backwards glance. And somehow, that cool pragmatism was worth more than any effusive declaration of understanding. John followed Teal'c down the next hallway with his heart a fraction lighter.

* * *

"What's he doing?"

"He appears to be reprogramming the sensors."

"Which sensors? I don't recognise any of this- whoa, whoa, whoa, bring that page up again."

"I don't think he knows how he's doing it, Rodney."

"Then why are we letting him do it?"

"Because he is doing it well?"

The sound of the two Atlantis scientists and Sam in full flow was audible some way down the hallway as they approached. Daniel hung back and let Jack lean against the doorframe to display the sardonic raised eyebrow he was obviously dying to. Even Sam took almost thirty seconds to register his presence.

"Sir!" She flushed slightly, recognising her own carelessness without any need for a rebuke. Jack graciously - not a word Daniel was accustomed to applying to him - failed to give one, simply wandered in and gave his clone a scowl.

"Okay, who let JJ here at the controls?" he demanded.

Daniel mentally filed that nickname under 'things to inquire into further when Jack is very drunk'.

"Technically, he is not actually using any controls," Zelenka piped up helpfully.

"Yes, because if he was, we could _stop_ him." McKay glowered and grabbed Jon by the wrist, but it didn't seem to affect the clone's concentration in the slightest. He had the same slightly glazed look adult Jack got when he was mentally interfacing with Ancient technology. "Hey! Kid. What are you doing? The sensors don't work like that!"

"Actually, what _is_ he doing?" Daniel moved forward to squint at the fast flowing Ancient text. He could read the language quite rapidly now, but computer code in any language was impenetrable to him.

"Doctor Zelenka had the idea of using the ATA gene as a way to narrow down which of the life signs might be Doctor Beckett," Sam explained.

"Which is, as I keep saying, _impossible_." McKay raised a hand and rolled his eyes like the sassy girlfriend in the kind of films Cassie was always watching. He pressed in closer to the screen. "Especially with the- where are we now? This isn't the code for the biometric sensors. What's he doing now?"

"_Tuas lumena obstra_," Jon muttered, nudging him out of the way.

"What? What does that mean?" McKay swivelled round to look at Daniel.

Jack stepped in before he could speak up. "He _said_, sure, you can't use any of the standard sensor arrays to pick up a single gene, _but_, you can trick the scanners that look for viral contagions into accepting normal human parameters as a contagious disease, and then flag the ATA gene as a genetic weakness that makes people susceptible. Then you just intercept the quarantine instructions and that'll tell you where to look for the gene carriers."

They all stared at Jack for a few moments. Zelenka turned raised eyebrows on Daniel.

"He said that?" he queried.

Daniel quirked an eyebrow of his own Jack's way. "He said, 'you're blocking my light'," he reported neutrally.

Jack shrugged defensively. "It was in the tone of voice!"

* * *

They gated in ready for trouble.

Elizabeth hadn't detected anything amiss besides the inconvenient timing of the gate malfunction, but she trusted Ford's instincts, and it was better to be braced for a fight and not find it than vice versa. At the Lieutenant's suggestion, they went through the gate at a low crouch. She felt ridiculous doing it, but it dried up pretty quickly when the first burst of energy passed over her head and grounded itself on the Stargate.

After that, it all turned into chaos.

She'd been given basic weapons training, but she wasn't crazy enough to rely on it in a firefight, and anyway her companions were making it a priority to protect her. Ford and Teyla shoved her this way and that and crushed her into corners as they returned their assailant's fire.

"These are not Wraith or Genii," Teyla assessed quickly. "I do not recognise the weaponry they are using."

"I do. That's zat fire," Ford said. "One shot'll take you down like a Wraith stunner, but two in succession will kill," he explained for Teyla's benefit.

"There were no zats in the original cargo manifest," Elizabeth reminded him. Captured Goa'uld weaponry was jealously hoarded by the SGC thanks to its near-inexhaustible power sources, and like a fool she hadn't pushed for some because she'd expected this to be a peaceful expedition.

"Which means we're probably looking at a Goa'uld incursion," Ford said grimly. "Worst case scenario, they've infested the whole SGC. If they found a ZPM and made contact our people would have let them waltz right in." He squeezed off another few rounds at the unseen zat-holder.

He was right. Damn, damn, damn. Why hadn't she instituted a 'contact from home' protocol? The gate techs knew how precious every second was with an intergalactic wormhole connection, and they would have been only too delighted to drop the shield immediately for visitors from home... It was a foothold situation waiting to happen.

Or rather, no longer waiting.

"Their forces cannot be too extensive," Teyla said. "They knew we were returning, and yet left only one guard to keep watch over the Stargate."

"Major Sheppard'll be giving them hell," Ford said confidently. "Atlantis is too big for any sized invasion force to hold. Doctor Weir? Go!" With no further warning, he and Teyla hustled her toward the stairs, keeping up their covering fire on their Goa'uld attacker. Elizabeth ran as best she could, wishing she'd kept up the jogging that was always on her daily schedule - and always the first thing to be sacrificed as soon as a crisis loomed into view.

She wondered if she should be worried that even as she was running for her life, she was mentally blocking out a new agenda for their next meeting of department heads. New security drills, stricter fitness testing for the civilian population - Rodney would throw a wobbly at that, even though his offworld adventures had probably chased him up into the top ten percent, and not just because the others were dire. In fact, he'd probably use his field duty as an excuse to wriggle out of it - better to let him have that victory in the name of keeping the peace, or press him into competing against his fellow scientists to give him a self-esteem boost and them a reality check...?

Both her headlong flight and her ill-timed managerial musings were cut short when a dark-clad figure stepped out in front of them. Ford stumbled in shock, and was taken down by a zat blast from behind before he had a chance to react. Teyla came to a wary halt, not knowing enough about the handsome man before them to guess how much of a threat he was.

Elizabeth envied her that blissful ignorance.

Baal placed his hands together genteelly, and gave her a winning smile.

"Ah, Doctor Weir. How lovely to see you again."


	20. Chapter 20

** XX **

Teal'c was reserving judgement about Major Sheppard.

He appeared a competent warrior, so far as it could be judged before battle was joined, although he was possessed of an attitude that would probably be termed 'flip'. Master Bra'tac would have thrashed it out of any Jaffa trainee in a matter of hours, but Teal'c had learned early on not to judge the people of Earth on what came out of their mouths. The Jaffa were a straightforward people - false gods did not encourage deceptions that might disprove their divinity - but even the simplest of Tauri had a thousand different ways to say the same thing.

He had learned quickly to look to eyes and body language to convey what often alien words did not. The true epiphany had come when he realised that in times of duress the Tauri used words as a form of martial art, feinting, covering, deflecting. O'Neill had a mastery of the art that matched his all-out approach to other forms of combat: using every tactic - from the cunning to the childish to the outright bizarre - to drive the conversation back from any areas he preferred it not to visit.

He sensed a similar wariness in Sheppard's flippancy, but what old wounds he was guarding with it remained to be seen. Perhaps, like O'Neill's, they were what gave him strength; or perhaps they were dangerous weaknesses. For now, Teal'c would wait, and observe.

And in the meantime, perhaps, have some fun.

"So, this... Jaffa thing. What's that all about?"

Sheppard spoke casually, but kept his attention on their surroundings at all times, so Teal'c saw no problem with conversing with him.

"I am a Jaffa as my parents were Jaffa. The false gods enslaved my people many centuries ago, and we have but recently cast off the yoke of servitude."

He had found that the most profound truths directly stated tended to rattle the Tauri most thoroughly. Sheppard paused for a brief moment.

"O-kay. Yoke casting. I dig that. So, what, you had one of those snake-things in you too?"

"Under the reign of the false gods, all Jaffa were implanted with an immature symbiote at the onset of puberty. It used to be that removal of the symbiote caused death, but with the creation of the drug tretonin we were freed forever from such oppression."

"Cool," Sheppard said, inadequately. "Do you get to keep the super powers?"

"Indeed," Teal'c said, and did not smirk. He had become freer with his expressions in the years since he had joined the Tauri, but he could easily practise control when the whim took him. And right now, he was feeling whimsical.

Until he heard something, and raised a hand for silence. Sheppard, to his credit, stilled immediately and tried to detect the threat on his own instead of asking. Human senses, however, were no match for Jaffa.

"What's happening?"

"Five people, several hallways down."

"Super-hearing, huh?" Sheppard nodded to himself, impressed.

Teal'c was still listening. "There are two guards escorting three captives." That was more than partly guesswork: he couldn't pick the numbers out so cleanly, but one guard on four was foolishness, and three on two unlikely with Goa'uld arrogance. However, he was, as the Tauri said, on a roll. "Two of the captives are women."

Sheppard was hearteningly incredulous. "You can tell all that from footsteps?"

"I am Jaffa," he said impassively. He quirked an eyebrow. "One of the women is a warrior."

He saw no need to mention that he'd just glimpsed the group passing through a cross-corridor. Instead, he directed Sheppard with a series of gestures to a position where he would see them too. The Major's expression grew grimmer.

"Weir, Ford, and Teyla. Dammit. They must have gated right into a trap."

* * *

"How damaging is it that they have Weir?"

Radek was unsure whether to be reassured by General O'Neill's quiet authority, or frustrated by his degree of calm. The Goa'uld had Elizabeth! How could they talk in terms of captured information, as if she were no more than a computer disk?

Rodney was himself fairly collected, but at least Radek could see the personal concern beneath. "It's huge," he said. "She has the full set of clearance codes, access to all sealed areas and the full untranslated Ancient database. Worse, she has the authority to lock out all personnel, even Major Sheppard. If they get her command code, we're going to spend a whole lot time we don't have trying to crack security systems that _I_ built to be uncrackable."

"She would never reveal anything to the Goa'uld," Radek said stubbornly. These outsiders did not know Elizabeth as they did. Did they think she would be weak, just because she was not military? If they did, they were all fools. She was perhaps the very strongest of all of them. O'Neill should know what kind of endurance it took to be the one in command.

Colonel Carter spared him a sadly pitying look. "She may not have a choice. If one of the Goa'uld chooses to jump hosts, it'll have full access to the memories of the person it takes over."

The thought that Elizabeth might have one of those obscene creatures invade her mind... Radek swore softly to himself in his own language, but it brought him little comfort.

"Rescuing Weir has to be our main priority," Rodney insisted.

Daniel Jackson leaned forward. "Unfortunately, she's likely to be even harder to get at than Beckett."

"Or not," O'Neill said. Radek realised that the display on the screen before them had changed. Jon's program had achieved its purpose, and the life signs display now distinguished between blips of two different colours. Most of the blue ones were mingled in with many whites in the pockets of prisoners, but there was one in the infirmary area, accompanied by a blip that had to be a Goa'uld. "Who wants to take a bet that that's Beckett?"

No one did. "What do they want with him?" Radek wondered.

"The same thing that we do," Rodney said darkly. "He knows all about the gene - and he has one."

Radek nodded soberly. "They want either his brain or his body." He thought about the havoc a Goa'uld could wreak in Atlantis with a host body that had the gene. "It is imperative that they get neither."

It was clear that the others agreed.

* * *

Carson had run out of ways to keep stalling.

Nerve-induced clumsiness was not something he found at all hard to fake, but the fact was, there were only so many ways he could delay collecting a needle and vial of the engineered retrovirus. For a fraction of a second he'd considered pretending there was none on hand and he'd have to synthesize it from scratch, but if Baal had access to the inventory list he'd have recognised the lie in an instant.

He probably would have anyway. Carson knew full well he was a bloody awful liar. His dear old mum had always been so easily upset he'd never had the chance to get good at it as a boy. One look at her disappointed face and he still cracked like an egg dropped on concrete.

Like the vial would crack, if he let go of it now. It would be so easy. His hands were visibly shaking. It would look like an accident. Move those fingers a millimetre further apart, and it would be 'oops, sorry laddie, you'll just have to wait while I whip up a new batch'.

But he didn't dare. Baal might or might not need him alive; Hertzberg he was sure was just itching for a chance to shoot him. From what he knew of the Goa'uld, they didn't play well with others, and the chances of his jailor checking in with Baal before he took his own steps to punish misbehaviour were pretty small indeed.

He couldn't risk it. Even if he were the kind to want to go out in a futile blaze of glory - which he wasn't, thank you very much - he had a duty to stay alive. He was the expedition's main doctor, their best authority on the gene and the biology of the Wraith. He was needed.

Instead of letting the vial smash, he packed it safely away in a padded box where it couldn't do so even by accident. Then, on a split second's impulse, he grabbed a second one to accompany it: this one, a simple sedative. He didn't think he had anything to hand that could take down a Goa'uld, but perhaps if he got the chance he could substitute the retrovirus for something much less harmful.

Maybe it was a smaller, less impressive brand of heroism than the dramatic gesture, but it was the best he could do. He closed the box and followed Hertzberg out of the lab.

* * *

John automatically checked his weapon as they moved in on the medical labs. He wasn't too hot on the idea of bullets flying around a non-combatant and a whole lot of very smashable medical equipment, but there was no time to go back and get the Wraith stunner off McKay. Teal'c had a zat, but apparently that was no alternative: a single shot wouldn't take down a Goa'uld, and multiple hits would kill Beckett. Flying bullets it was, then.

A part of him was still itchy over following somebody else's battle plan. His own first priority would have been to bust out Weir and his teammates - okay, a tougher proposition given the much greater guard they were under, but then, it never hurt to roll with the unexpected. O'Neill wanted Beckett freed not just as a step in winning back the city, but because he needed him to patch up Mystery Gene Kid. Medical urgency John could understand, but that was still a hint at the kind of priority-splitting that made him antsy. Even the best of COs brought their own agendas to the table, and if it didn't match your assessment of the situation, then well, you could just suck it up and keep your mouth shut, Major.

John's record bore a few black marks - not to mention a whole host of grey smudges - from his stubborn refusal to knuckle under to that reality of military life.

Right now, though, he was wary rather than out and out defiant. They were approaching their objective, so he shut off the inconvenient thinky part of his brain and followed Teal'c's lead.

It turned out they'd cut the timing pretty fine. Beckett and his Goa'uld escort were just emerging from the lab as they moved into position. Any later, and they'd have missed their chance to get the Goa'uld pinned down: there was only one doorway on the lab, but the hallway leading onto it had to many offshoots to cover. Fortunately, the Goa'uld had taken note of the same thing, and was coming out ahead of Beckett to cut his chances of making a run for it.

They let it get half a dozen steps from the cover of the lab doorway, and then opened fire.

Teal'c held his staff-type energy weapon high, aiming for a chest shot, so John shot low and to the left, the spot where he'd have taken a dive to if he was under fire. He'd called it right, but he underestimated the Goa'uld's reflexes. Not only did it twist away from Teal'c's shot, but it managed to leap beyond the target of his own. Before he could adjust his aim he had to duck back around the corner to avoid a zat blast.

Beckett squeaked in surprise and hit the deck. A padded box fell from his grip and skidded across the floor. As the Goa'uld made a grab for it Teal'c's next shot passed over its head, missing by less than an inch. John stepped out and drilled it in the stomach as it rose.

At least two of his bullets hit home, but they didn't slow the thing down. It whirled and squeezed off another zat blast at him. John saw the shot coming, but the narrow hallway left him little room to dodge without getting in Teal'c's line of fire.

He threw himself back against the wall, and the zat blast splashed over his head. To his dismay, the energy didn't dissipate, but rippled outwards across the wall. The shock that he got from it was less than the one a direct hit had given him earlier, but still enough to knock him to the floor.

Goddamn energy-conducting walls. Next time he saw an Ancient, he was definitely having a few words about their design philosophy.

His body was jittering madly, and it took an effort to wrench his neck sideways and get a read on the Goa'uld's position. It was grinning malevolently and steadying its zat for the second, killing shot.

Teal'c's next blast hit it square in the throat.

The Goa'uld toppled like a felled tree. Super healing powers it might have, but anything that walked around in a human body, even a stolen one, tended to find it useful to have lungs connected to mouth and nose and a working spinal column. It was dead.

Or not. To his horror, John saw the mouth of what ought to be so much crispy corpse slowly push open... and then _something_ forced its way out.

It was snakelike, about six inches long, entirely too reminiscent of that chest-burster thing in _Alien_, and headed his way. John's well-honed military instincts told him that the most appropriate action right now was to scream like a ten-year-old girl and run away.

Fortunately for his pride, and much less fortunately for his chances of continued survival, he was still under the effects of the zat. All that happened was that he let out a faint, high-pitched sound along the lines of, "_Gneep!_" and jerked his right hand a few inches.

The Goa'uld parasite wasn't fast, but it was determined, and it was getting entirely too close for his comfort. John had no intention of becoming its latest model of all-terrain vehicle. Unfortunately, right now he wasn't doing so well in the driving seat himself. As he fought to move his spasming body, the thing drew steadily closer. It was covered in its last host's blood, and its little needle teeth-

Teeth? Why the hell did an internal parasite need teeth?

_All the better to chew you with, my dear_... John redoubled his struggles to get away - but it wasn't going to be enough. He gained half an inch of space; the parasite had crossed two in the same time. It was already close enough to brush his hair. Any moment now there would be a short, sharp-

-Squelch. A military issue boot - size: absolutely freakin' huge - stomped down a hairsbreadth from his nose, and squashed the parasite into so much biological waste.

John twisted his neck as much as he could manage, and looked up. There was a mountain towering over him.

It raised an eyebrow.

"Major Sheppard. Our mission here is achieved."

With that understated pronouncement, the Jaffa simply picked John up off the ground and slung him over his shoulders.

* * *

Rodney McKay was harder to pin down than you'd suppose.

Admittedly, the first time they'd met, Sam hadn't had much chance to get to know him. And wouldn't have wanted it. When somebody breezed in, insisted that their theory work trumped your years of hands-on experience, called you a dumb blonde, and campaigned to have your teammate left for dead, it tended to make a certain type of first impression.

The second impression had been similar, albeit under slightly more relaxed circumstances since the only thing at stake that time was the possible destruction of the planet. Until McKay's dumbass plan had resulted in her being injured, and he'd attempted to confide - well, okay, massively overshare - his insecurities in the course of apologising. At that point, she'd been forced to upgrade her mental image of him from obnoxious, callous jackass to obnoxious, grown-up version of that kid in junior high who you couldn't help liking despite his inability to interact on any level other than boob jokes.

And all right, it hadn't really been _that_ much of a dumbass plan.

The fact was that under about forty-seven layers of smug, there actually lay a brain that could do a great deal of what its owner bragged about. Not one she could work alongside without a serious homicide risk, but certainly one that ought to be put to work somewhere a safe distance away. The Pegasus Galaxy had seemed plenty safe enough.

She'd been one of the major voices in getting McKay as installed as scientific leader for the expedition. He had the smarts, he could perform under pressure, and while he definitely didn't have the people skills, when you were assembling a team of genius candidates it was probably wiser to go with good old-fashioned tyranny than expect them to respond to good management. But it had never been intended to be a field position.

Clearly, something had changed.

She watched him as they both waited for General O'Neill to return from his sweep of the pier. She'd convinced the General to bring him along because they were probably going to have a limited window to disable the hybrid ship, and he had more hands-on experience with Ancient technology than she did. She'd fully expected it to be a babysitting detail, but McKay had surprised her. He'd kept up a stream of nervous chatter that didn't falter for long even after one of the General's glares, but he handled his weapon decently, stayed aware of his surroundings, and obeyed directions. That put him well ahead of the curve according the Jack O'Neill system of rating civilians - although he'd definitely fail on the most important rule, Do Not Be Annoying. But then, if you believed the General even Daniel failed that one.

Sam could picture, now, McKay undergoing the same slow transformation of self that Daniel had done through the years. She wasn't sure whether to be impressed or slightly saddened.

"So, uh, Colonel, exactly who _is_ that kid you brought with you?" McKay finally asked the question the General's presence had cowed him out of raising. Sam, her face turned away from him as she scanned the hallway, allowed herself a small smirk.

"That would be General O'Neill."

McKay lowered his eyebrows condescendingly. "_Kid_, Colonel. As in physical age, not mental."

"Exactly." She grinned at his wilful refusal to show any confusion. "You've heard of Loki?"

He got it quickly. "The Asgard clone."

She didn't have time to give him more than a nod before the General returned.

"It's Colonel Casey," he said shortly. His grim face would be unreadable to many, but Sam knew him well enough to recognised the self-castigation. He was pissed that a whole team under his command had been taken for hosts, and even more pissed that he hadn't stopped it.

"So, how do we, er, neutralise him?" McKay asked, with a nervous cough.

The General answered the question, but addressed his response to Sam. "We take him alive." The appended 'if we can' didn't need to be spoken aloud. "We need to know what Baal's plans are. If we can get the Goa'uld out of him, he can talk to us. If not..." he looked grim, "we're just going to have to find another way to get the information out."

That dark prospect silenced even McKay.

After a moment, the General straightened up. "Teal'c and Sheppard are on their way. We'll take care of Casey. You guys figure out what you need to do to disable that ship."


	21. Chapter 21

** XXI **

It was clear even to Radek's untrained eye that Jon's condition had worsened. He had slipped into unconsciousness again, tossing and turning as if beset with fever dreams. The Ancient diagnostic devices they had meant that Carson's medical exam was less hands-on than its equivalent back on Earth, but the boy still failed to wake even when the doctor drew a sample of blood.

"How is he?" Radek asked. Carson sighed.

"Truth be told? I haven't a bloody clue. I've never seen anything like it." He paused to consider. "I've seen a few things just as strange, mind, but never anything like it. His brain activity's fluctuating wildly. He's using maybe thirty, forty percent more of his brain than a normal human being, but it's erratic. Parts are switching on and off like a set of Christmas tree lights."

"What could cause such a reaction?" Radek peered at the display on the handheld scanner. The readings themselves meant little to him, but he could see that they jumped and flickered.

"Brain surgery, maybe?" Carson shook his head. "Whatever's going on, it's affecting the underlying physical structure of the brain, but it's happening at such a microscopic level even the Ancient scanners can't pick it up. Short of doing a brain biopsy there's no way I can even track it, let alone find any way to stop it. And frankly I'm not confident enough of finding any solution to justify putting him through that. With that kind of unpredictable brain activity surgery could be disastrous."

Radek thought of his own latest project. "The scanning room that we discovered might allow for a more detailed study." After all, why would the Ancients need to build something the size of an MRI when they could fit the functionality of one into something no bigger than a PDA? "Unfortunately, I have been unable to configure it for safe use on organic materials. The documentation is too vast to sort through easily."

A faint throat-clearing alerted them to a new arrival. "Actually, I might be able to help with that," Doctor Jackson said.

* * *

Within the cell, time passed slowly.

Teyla had already ascertained that there was no means of escape - not that she had expected otherwise. The Ancestors' methods of construction far surpassed even the most secure of buildings elsewhere in the galaxy. While she had the greatest respect for both of her companions, she could not help but wish for the presence of Major Sheppard and Doctor McKay. They would doubtless have some wild yet oddly compelling plan for escape, or at the least have made their captivity more entertaining.

"Tell me more of these Goa'uld," she requested, articulating the strange name carefully. "They originate in your home galaxy?"

"Unfortunately," said Ford, with a bitter twist to the words that was foreign to his usual nature.

"The Goa'uld controlled a large number of worlds in our galaxy until recently," Doctor Weir elaborated. "They masqueraded as gods and enslaved the local peoples, picking and choosing hosts and putting the rest to work. Our people first encountered them nine years ago when we activated our Stargate, and we've been at war with them ever since. Most of the System Lords have fallen, but some are still hanging on - and Baal is just about the worst of them."

Teyla had worked out how long an Earth year was... eventually. It amused her - at those times when she was not irritable enough for it to frustrate her - how even the most diplomatic and thoughtful of the Earth people remained hopelessly mired in their own references. As a trader, she had learned early on to adapt her speech so that the people of many planets would comprehend. It had served her well even with a culture as strange as that of Atlantis's new residents. But although the people of Earth had many great technologies and even more impressive knowledge, they were still in many ways a very _young_ race.

An impulsive one, most definitely. "You chose to venture forth to another galaxy while still fighting such an enemy in your own?" she asked incredulously. If they had sought to bring back allies and technology, yes, that she could easily understand, but they had sent away the best and the brightest of their people with little expectation that they would return.

Such optimism would have once been incomprehensible to her. And that, perhaps, was why a young race could succeed where many much older and wiser had failed.

"Well, actually, the Goa'uld haven't been our biggest enemy in the last few years," Ford mused. "After we took out Apophis and Sokar and Cronus and convinced the Jaffa to rise up and overthrow their masters, we were really more worried about the Replicators - nasty little metal bugs that eat everything - and then there was Anubis... okay, he was a Goa'uld, but he was a half-Ascended Goa'uld, and he had this army of indestructible mutant super-soldiers..." He perhaps saw the look that was surely forming on her face. "We like to think big," he said, with a shrug.

"So I have observed," Teyla noted wryly.

Perhaps they should not give up hope of a rescue just yet.

The cell door opened on the unspoken cue, but it was not McKay or Major Sheppard. It was one of the Goa'uld: the young woman. Teyla was frustrated to know that her ability to assess a warrior's physique at a glance was no use to her here. The slim, soft-bodied scholar she saw was only the outer skin to something that did not require muscle or training for its strength and speed.

The illusion further shattered when the woman opened her mouth. "Doctor Weir. You will kneel before your gods, and tell them of their new domain," said the harsh, grating voice of the parasite.

Their interrogations were to begin.

* * *

The only thing Jack O'Neill hated more than a Goa'uld was a Goa'uld wearing the face of someone he knew.

He knew Lieutenant Colonel Ben Casey. Hell, he'd hand-picked the man himself; General Hammond had put Jack to the task of assessing potential SG team leaders early on in the program's run. Which Jack chose to view as a sign of good old George's excellent delegation skills, rather than a hint he'd been being groomed for this set of stars even that far back. No, he was still hanging on to the theory that his current position was down to some kind of bureaucratic snafu. Or possibly a bet.

He hoped vindictively that someone had lost a lot of money on that one.

The truth was, he could wear the General's shiny shoes, and even march about in them. They just weren't very comfortable. Jack contemplated an extended metaphor about blisters, then decided to leave that well alone.

He wasn't made to sit behind a desk. He was made for _this_: a weapon, a target, and decisions that were never _easy_, but always simple. Move. Shoot. Act. Survive.

If only he wasn't going up against the goddamn Goa'uld.

Nothing like hand-picking a guy, teaching him everything that you could, and then having him switch sides on you: hostage and enemy all wrapped up in one inconvenient package. He knew Casey; more importantly, Casey knew _him_. Whether Baal and his minions knew SG-1 were here was uncertain, but as soon as they did, the snake pulling the strings in Casey's brain would have access to all his memories of Jack O'Neill to predict what he would do next.

Just as well Jack had always had gift for being unpredictable.

He waited for the Goa'uld's patrol to approaching his hiding spot, and then calmly stepped out in front of him.

"Hey there, Benny. Long time, no see."

To his disappointment, the Goa'uld didn't start in surprise, simply raised the ribbon-device - and what was Baal doing outfitting his underling with a ribbon-device, couldn't he be a suspicious bastard like the rest of the time? - and aimed it directly at Jack's head. But then, of course, he had to do the gloating thing.

"General O'Neill. My Lord Baal suspected that you would come to witness our venture sooner or later. He _will_ be pleased to have your company again."

Jack was one hundred percent certain that his internal shudder didn't show on the surface. He hated himself for it all the same.

Only young idiots on a one-way trip to a body bag believed that you needed to be fearless to fight. Fear was the icy tingle in your guts that saved your life, time and time again. Fear told you that this situation was going to go bad, that this guy was too tough for you to take in a fair fight, that you had to get your teammate out of there _now_ and not wait for the signal. Fear powered your instincts.

Terror stopped them. Terror was the freeze, the fumble, the moment when even fight or flight broke down, and you just let it all go and waited for the end to come.

What he felt when he remembered Baal's fortress was not fear.

"Yeah. Well, sorry as I am to deprive him of that pleasure-" Jack mentally counted beats as his mouth ran on autopilot, tracking Teal'c and Sheppard's progress in his mind, "-you're going to have to tell His Bounciness that the expiry date on that offer..." And that zat should be firing just about... _now_.

Or _now_. Or... now?

"I presume you are awaiting the rescue of Major Sheppard and the _Shol'va_," the Goa'uld said mildly. "I regret to inform you that they have been... detained."

Aw, crap.

* * *

"Uh, Colonel?"

Sam could have growled in frustration. The Ancient engine Baal had stolen and installed in the tel'tak could represent a huge leap forward in their understanding of hyperdrive technology. She really didn't want to destroy it if she didn't have to, but it was imperative that they not leave Baal in control of a ship with a working intergalactic drive. With the aid of the information the Tok'ra had decoded from Teshram's lab she was confident she could get the hyperdrive so thoroughly off-line it would take Baal months to restore it.

At least, she could if McKay would _just. Stop. Talking._ She'd done him the courtesy of assuming that, despite his lack of hands-on experience with Goa'uld craft, he'd be able to disable the sublight engines and weapon systems, but he hadn't stopped bitching about the assignment since they'd got aboard. Never mind that she'd seen the specs _and_ was familiar with Baal's style of programming - so far as McKay was concerned, the engine was Ancient in design, so it should be his baby.

"McKay-" She turned and glared at him.

"Uh-uh-uh!" He raised a finger, but his stuttering attempt to grab her attention wasn't half as commanding as General O'Neill's bark. Sam tilted her head impatiently.

"What?" she snapped.

There was one thing to be said for the company of Rodney McKay - he was one of the very few people she felt no obligation whatsoever to be civil to. Arrogance? Lack of consideration? Blatant chauvinism? She could rock an icy stare and frigid politeness as well as the next girl. But once you started breaking out the blonde jokes? _Die._

Instead of contrition, she got narrow-eyed petulance. "The life signs detector is showing only two of the lifeforms moving." McKay gave an obnoxious little cough. "Which, by the way, is a little disturbing, since if you recall, there should be three of our people out there. And the ones that are moving are headed _away_ from both of the others, ergo-"

"Oh, cram it, McKay." Would it kill him to just state that their guys were in trouble without trying to wow her with his deductive skills? Sam pushed past him and opened up a very familiar six-panel button on the rear wall. "A hundred dollars says I can override the safety protocols on the rings to beam them in here before you can."

"Is that, er, US or Canadian?" He hurried over to join her.

* * *

Okay, current sit rep: sucktastic. Jack had no idea what had happened to Teal'c and Sheppard, or even if Casey was bluffing about taking them out. He doubted it, or they would be here by now. Best case scenario, they'd been ribbon-deviced to unconsciousness, or maybe Sheppard had been zatted.

Teal'c could not have been zatted, because a single zat blast wouldn't reliably put him down for the count, and two in succession were fatal. And since it was impossible that Teal'c could be dead, it followed that Teal'c had not been zatted. Logic.

Besides, he was pretty sure he would have heard.

So, ribbon-deviced, or good old-fashioned 'thumped with a blunt object'. On the plus side, they'd probably recover without ill effects. On the minus side, probably not quickly enough to do him any good. And Casey had disarmed him thoroughly, finding not just his extra knife but also the extra-extra knife. Note to self: no more gearing up in front of members of other SG teams. Of course, Jack's own team was just as likely - if not more so - to be victim to a takeover by hostile alien forces, but he figured that if one of SG-1 was playing host, concealed weaponry was the least of his worries.

"So, you know," he said over his shoulder as the Goa'uld herded him along, "I really think you're overestimating old Frisbee's level of interest in me." Not quite up to his usual standards, but sue him, there were only so many Baal jokes you could make before it got disturbingly filthy. "In fact, I'm not sure he even knows who I am, so-"

"Oh, he knows who you are," the thing with Casey's face said coolly. "And what. My master is... most intrigued by the prospect of a host with the activation gene."

At that point, Jack kicked him in the shins.

It wasn't a plan. It wasn't even a split-second choice to take advantage of a sudden opportunity. It was, in fact, bare-assed stupid. Jack's brain simply jumped from processing the words to a hard, fast and physical _hell no_ without waiting for input from its rational centres. He was not having Baal in his head, no way, no how, no thank you.

One nugget of knowledge Earth had managed to export to their much more advanced allies was that sometimes, when things were at their most dire, there was just no substitute for good old-fashioned stupidity. It had the advantage of knocking for six an enemy who had just enough respect for you to believe you couldn't possibly be that dumb.

Casey staggered. Jack pressed his attack, mainly out of a lack of other viable options, but though he got in a few blows, he couldn't hope to take out a Goa'uld hand-to-hand. His chances of disarming it were even slimmer. Ribbon-devices were a bitch that way; not only were they impossible to turn back on their owner, but they were next to impossible to get off in the first place. The only good thing about going up against a ribbon-device was that they were fairly close range.

Unfortunately, right now so was he.

He swept Casey's legs in a manoeuvre that probably did more damage to his own knees than the enemy, and dived toward the tel'tak. It was a crappy-ass excuse for cover, but it beat duking it out. If he could just manage to avoid-

-Being slammed into the side of the ship by a blast of the ribbon-device.

_Ow._

Jack crumpled to the ground, the air shoved out of his lungs with bruising force. The next thing he knew he was being hauled backwards. He looked up into a malevolent smirk that had no business being on the face of Benjamin Casey, and the palm of an upraised ribbon-device.

Then there was a burst of brilliant light.

...And then there was the face of Samantha Carter, leaning over him.

Jack was so glad he didn't have enough breath in his lungs to have voiced his first impulsive crack about angels. There was no way that wouldn't have come out embarrassingly sappy.

Carter smiled down at him. "I rigged the bio-filters on the rings to reject Goa'uld," she said brightly.

"That's nice, Carter," he told her, sitting up with a wince as his knees protested. He could see Teal'c sat against the wall of the tel'tak, clearly in the process of coming around, while Sheppard lay unconscious.

"Well, technically there was a thirty-four percent chance that the alterations would cause you and the Goa'uld both to be broken down to your component atoms and smeared across the cargo hold, but I corrected for that," McKay chimed in.

Jack looked askance at Carter. She shrugged unconcernedly. "It was a two percent chance at the most, sir."

"Where's Casey?"

"In the process of skedaddling," McKay noted, checking his life signs reader.

Carter shook her head before Jack could form the question. "Sorry, sir. He'll be out of the range of the rings before I can reprogram them."

The immediate need for speed over, Jack went to check on Teal'c. For a Jaffa on tretonin, kelno'reem was no longer a medical necessity - there not being a symbiote in there to actually try and commune with - but Teal'c was still in the habit of meditating whenever he was injured. Sure enough, Teal'c's eyelids flickered open.

"I apologise, O'Neill," he said, even more stiffly than usual. "I failed to anticipate the Goa'uld's stealth approach."

"It happens to the best of us, T." Jack patted him on the shoulder, and moved to check out Sheppard, who was receiving the Rodney McKay 'tentative prodding' school of medical attention.

"Is his face supposed to be that pink?" McKay wondered. "Because, you know, he doesn't even get sunburn. It's very annoying. I keep telling him, I have fair skin, I'm in the high risk category for melanoma, but-"

"He's fine, McKay," Jack said shortly.

"We should probably get all three of you checked out by Doctor Beckett, all the same," Carter said, because Carter had not gotten the memo about not feeding obsessive scientists new things to worry about.

Either that, or Carter was indulging her impressively well-hidden mean streak, and torturing McKay and everyone within earshot of him by extension.

"_I'm_ fine, Carter," Jack added, rolling his eyes. In fact, he was - almost suspiciously so. He should be aching a lot more from the tussle he'd just been in, even if nothing was broken. He reflexively sent out a thought toward his clone.

_Hey, you. Me. What are you doing?_

The only response he got was a turbulent rise and fall of equations and half-formed dream images. If his clone had healed him, he'd done it without conscious thought.

Of course, the other possibility was that he'd healed himself. Uh. This him - this he? - had healed his own body- this _particular_ version of his own body- Aw, crap. _One of him_ had to have done it. Either way, it wasn't good. Even less good than the fact that he lived a life where "one of him" was a reasonable grammatical construction.

His condition was advancing, and it didn't really matter which him. Because the faster his clone went down, the faster he dragged Jack with him, and pretty soon he wouldn't be able to hide it.

But 'pretty soon' wasn't right now. He straightened up. "Carter. How much longer do you need?"

"Technically, we're done, sir. The ship's effectively disabled. It would take me months to figure out how to get it functional again, and even if Baal knows the system much better than we do..." She showed him a handful of crystals that he was just going to have to assume were vital parts of the onboard computer system.

"So... un-technically?"

"Well, sir, I was just thinking." She smiled warmly at him. "The maximum transport range of the rings would take us almost all the way back to the lab area. If we could somehow fool the city's biosensors into believing there are still life signs onboard the ship and then ring out, we have the opportunity to lure the Goa'uld into a trap."

Jack turned his head to look at McKay, their expert on the city's systems. "Can you do that?"

McKay folded his arms and glowered. "Of course I can do that."

"Good. Then do it."

It was about time they went on the offensive.


	22. Chapter 22

** XXII **

"Well, I don't think you've anything to worry about, Major." Carson put aside his penlight. "I wouldn't recommend you take any more energy blasts to the head, mind. I don't know what the cumulative damage from this kind of device might be."

"It's not high on my list of priorities," Sheppard said, wrinkling up his face. Carson patted his shoulder.

"I can give you something for the headache, but I imagine you'll have some residual sensitivity to noise and bright lights."

"No blowing things up. Check."

Carson gave him a look. "The best thing you can do for now is rest."

There was a whole checklist of other cautions to make, but what was the point? Sheppard had heard them all before, and certainly wasn't likely to heed them while there was a crisis situation in progress. Carson turned to his next patient.

"I am fine," the Jaffa warrior said shortly, without even cracking open an eyelid. His meditative posture betrayed no sign of any discomfort, and his dark skin and branded forehead conspired to hide any trace of an energy burn that might be there. Nonetheless, Rodney had reported that he'd been unconscious for a period, and Carson would be happier if he could perform at least a basic neurological check.

"I'm sure you are, but for my peace of mind-"

"Jack!" Doctor Jackson barrelled into the room at the speed of Rodney on caffeine. The General casually leaned back in from his guard position at the door, and Colonel Carter looked up from the computer screen she and Rodney had been muttering over. Teal'c opened his eyes and cocked his head, but otherwise remained stationary.

"Daniel," O'Neill said, with contrasting calm.

It didn't appear to dampen Jackson's enthusiasm. He waved a datapad frantically. "Doctor Zelenka and I have been going over the documentation for the device they uncovered a couple of weeks ago. It's actually quite fascinating. The device has something equivalent to context-sensitive help - we were having trouble figuring out how to input a search string at first, until we realised that it was dependent on which particular function was currently active when you-"

"Daniel," O'Neill repeated, in a similarly flat but subtly different tone of voice.

"So it turns out it's not actually a scanning chamber after all," Jackson supplied, without missing a beat.

Rodney clicked his fingers imperiously. "I knew it! That's what I said right from the start. It's illogical. Why would the Ancients need to build a scanner that takes up a whole room when they can build devices that fit in the palm of your hand? That and the energy requirements alone make it self-evidently ridiculous..."

Colonel Carter gave him a gentle slap on the back of the head, and he stopped in mid-flow and blinked at her.

"Essentially, although the unit can function as a scanner, that's only a preliminary step toward its intended purpose," Doctor Jackson said, as if he'd never been interrupted.

"Which _is_...?" O'Neill made an impatient 'winding on' motion with one elegant hand, the other still maintaining a grip on his weapon.

Jackson beamed delightedly. "It's not just a scanner, it's a writer. The Ancients designed it to be capable of rewriting the genetic structure of any organic material placed inside the chamber."

Well, _that_ certainly caught Carson's attention. Colonel Carter, however, seemed somewhat troubled by the news.

"Like Nirrti's machine?" she said warily.

O'Neill narrowed his eyes. "Need I remind everyone that said machine had the delightful side effect of _causing people to disintegrate_?"

Carson's eyes widened. "Disintegration?" He turned on Rodney accusingly. "Nobody mentioned anything to me about disintegration." Oh, no, it was just 'come down here, Carson', 'activate this for us, Carson'... no one ever bothered to inform him he was putting his bloody life on the line.

Sure enough, Rodney just rolled his eyes. "Oh, please. It's untested Ancient medical technology. What part of doing horrible things to your innards wasn't implied?"

"Anyway, the point is, we can use it to reverse the damage done to Jon!" Jackson said excitedly.

"Daniel, this kind of technology is way beyond our level of expertise." Colonel Carter shook her head worriedly. "We don't really understand the process that's altering Jon's mind, let alone how to safely correct it. If we try to use the machine without knowing what we're doing we could cause untold damage."

Carson hated to be the voice of pessimism, but... "She's right. Gene therapy is one thing, but this is way out of my league. I honestly wouldn't know where to begin."

"But I know someone who would," Jackson said. Their eyes were drawn to the corner of the room where the restless teenage form still slumbered.

O'Neill tilted his head toward Carson. "Can you get him lucid?" was all he asked.

A dozen objections about the ethics and dangers of such a course of action rose up - and were swallowed back down. He might not like it, but he understood the stakes. "Aye," he said grimly. "But I can't say for how long."

The General's dark eyes narrowed. "Do it," he ordered.

* * *

Jack was never happy when he had to split up his team, which, given that he was a competent tactician, meant he was unhappy the vast majority of the time. Having a telepathic link with his clone should have put him ahead of the game, but his second self's head was such a mess of bad signals and too much information that Jack had to consciously block him out. Fortunately, it got easier as they moved further apart.

His clone had been restored to something approaching lucidity, and despatched with the Atlantean docs to see what they could make of this DNA re-writer gadget. Jack had sent Daniel and Beckett along to make sure his clone could A, communicate and B, stay vertical, and then thrown in Sheppard on the theory that a party containing that many civilian scientists was asking for trouble. Of course, Sheppard was still recovering from being ribbon-deviced for the second time in as many days, but ostensibly at least three of the group were capable of backing him up.

Those three being Jon, who had enough problems to be going on with; McKay, whose level of field-competency was a question mark; and Daniel, who was, well... Daniel. Tough, well-trained, highly experienced... and inclined to wander off like a five-year-old when he spotted something shiny.

Was it any wonder Jack was feeling a tad twitchy?

His two remaining teammates ignored his fidgeting with the ease of years of practise, until Carter raised her head from her computer screen. "Sir, we've got two blips approaching our Goa'uld trap."

He swung over to assess the readout for himself. "Any way to know which two?"

She shook her head regretfully. "No, sir."

"It is unlikely that Baal will oversee the ambush attempt himself," Teal'c opined.

"No kidding." There was no way his snakiness would be putting his own butt on the line. "So what did you and McKay rig to take them down?"

Carter looked faintly embarrassed. "Er... a concussive blast in one of the hallways that should trigger the automatic blast doors and seal them inside."

"Ah. The 'we just like to make things go boom' solution." Jack approved.

"Yes, sir." She grinned at him. He turned to Teal'c.

"Come on, T." He raised a finger to his lips. "Be vewwy, vewwy quiet... we're hunting wabbits!"

Teal'c spoiled his fun by simply raising an eyebrow and refusing to take the bait. Damn cultural assimilation.

"Trap has been triggered," Carter reported.

"Let's go." He and Teal'c set off at a run for the east pier.

They were only halfway there when the radio crackled and Carter's voice came over it. "Sir, we've got- damn. Sir, it looks like Baal's discovered the explosion. An alert must have come up in the control room. He's already working to release the blast doors."

"Can you stop him?"

"If I access the system now he'll be able to see which terminal I'm logged in from, sir," she warned. "It'll alert him to the tricks we're playing with the sensors, and if he's already got the command overrides from Weir he can shut us out of the computer network completely."

Not a good trade. "How long before he breaks through the blast doors without any interference?"

"McKay's set him a few hoops to jump through, but if it's Baal..." Jack could hear from the tone of the pause that she was grimacing. Then she let out her breath. "Four minutes max, sir, I'm sorry."

He and Teal'c pushed up the pace without need for discussion. There was no way they were going to make it over there in time to get a drop on the emerging Goa'uld. "Let me know when they're out."

Even though it could only be a loose estimate, his mind automatically ticked off the seconds. It was definitely less than three minutes later when Carter's tense voice came again. "General, the blast doors are coming open."

"Carter, we're not _there_ yet!" Jack took his frustration out on her, because he was an ass that way. They were still thirty seconds away - ample time for their snaky little captives to split.

Carter was silent for long enough that he started to mentally replay his words to see if he'd slipped something more offensive in there by accident. Then: "Sir? One of the blips is not moving."

"Dead or alive?" He shut down the part of his brain that worried about the state of the host. No hosts. No human beings. Chess pieces. Tactics.

"It's unlikely that the blast could have killed a Goa'uld, sir. They'd have to have been standing right on top of it, and even then it would take bad luck. We rigged the explosion to trigger the security protocols, not to do damage."

Okay, so figure on stunned, or else temporarily incapacitated - leg or spine injury. If it was the former, it wouldn't take the symbiote long to restore full health; even if it was the latter, it could still be armed and dangerous. "What's the other Goa'uld doing?"

"Leaving - sir, he's two hallways to your left, and headed for the control room."

"I shall attempt to intercept him," Teal'c volunteered, and swung a left turn before Jack had time to voice a protest. Not that he would have. He didn't like the thought of going one-on-one, but they couldn't afford to give the immobilised Goa'uld a chance to recover, and Teal'c had a much better chance of catching up with the other one.

Jack took every precaution approaching the hallway. Even when he saw a figure with an SG-6 patch slumped on the ground, apparently unconscious, he didn't relax one iota. He kept a pistol to the guy's head while he was taking a pulse. Not friendly, but he'd zap himself along with the Goa'uld if he used a zat while they were touching.

It was obvious his captive wasn't Casey, but Jack had to flip him over before the name surfaced in his mind. Lieutenant Brand, one of the science boys who all wanted to be Carter when they grew up. Skinny kid, overexcitable, bizarrely fond of mac and cheese.

Or he had been, once. Right now, all that was secondary to the fact he had a Goa'uld in his head.

And even if they'd taken him prisoner, they didn't have a way to get it out.

* * *

With all that whizzy Ancient technology, John reflected, you would have thought they could have taken a few moments off from learning the mysteries of the universe to invent a non-drowsy painkiller. His headache had progressed to the stage where he was ready to start shooting people, preferably himself.

Beckett would probably have sent him back - if he'd had the time to notice. Most of the doctor's attention was on the kid, who was stumbling along in a daze that John associated with McKay before he'd had breakfast. Occasionally he would mutter to himself in Ancient... and occasionally, John was sure he could hear those mutters even though the kid's lips weren't moving. Either that ribbon-device had fried him more than he thought, or something here was seriously hinky.

Knowing the way the universe worked, he was betting on hinky.

For a change, it wasn't McKay's chatter adding to his headache, but Jackson and Zelenka, excitedly conversing about God knew what in Czechoslovakian. McKay was being suspiciously quiet, huffing and puffing a little as he lagged behind the rest of the group. Occasionally he would steal nervous glances at the life signs detector.

Before they'd made it a third of the way to their destination, one of the glances bore fruit.

"Uh, Colonel? I'm reading a single isolated blip off to our-" He waved a hand vaguely, but failed to come up with an appropriate direction. "That side."

It occurred to John to wonder exactly when the hell McKay had last slept.

"Where?" Jackson scurried - there was no way that word should apply to someone with his height and muscle, but damned if he didn't do it - over to see for himself.

"Two hallways back. It's a... biology lab. Wakeman. Talks to cabbages."

"I doubt that's Doctor Wakeman now," said Jackson, his wry tone somehow avoiding a slapdown from McKay for stating the obvious.

"It's got to be one of the Goa'uld." John made his own bid for obviousness.

"Yes, thank you, Major, I think we all gathered that," McKay said scathingly.

There was no justice.

"We're still invisible, right?" John checked with the scientific part of the expedition.

"Er, the sensors are temporary blanked along our route," Zelenka confirmed. "However, if we deviate from our planned path or the Goa'uld steps onto it, our subterfuge will become obvious."

"Then let's not deviate!" Did he really need to explain these things?

Jackson did a passable take on 'kicked puppy'. "This could be a golden opportunity," he argued. "If it is one of the Goa'uld, this could be our best chance to capture it while it's isolated from its fellows. And it could be a member of the Atlantis expedition who escaped or was overlooked. We have to check it out."

John jerked an irritated thumb at the rest of their party. "Do they look like they're loaded for Goa'uld to you?"

"No, but I am." Jackson was already on his way off down the hallway. "All you have to do is point that thing and look menacing. The Goa'uld are fundamentally untrustworthy, but believe me, they have a _very_ good sense of self-preservation." He charged off without waiting for any further comment - like, oh, maybe _permission_?

"Did anyone see my lips move?" John wondered.

At this point, Kid Ancient decided to make his own bid for freedom, taking an unsteady step in the direction Jackson had hared off in. "_Effugit non permitas! Daniel est! Malum trahit in_ Walmart _possit!_" He gestured imperatively, though whether he was more pissed at Daniel for going or John for not following wasn't clear.

John pointed a stern finger at him. "Hey. People who've lost their facility to speak English do not get to volunteer."

Zelenka muttered something in Czech he was sure wasn't complimentary, while the kid gave him an alarmingly dead on version of the 'How would you like to be a Lieutenant again, Sheppard?' stare.

John scowled. He was pretty sure General O'Neill would happily make good on that threat if anything happened to Jackson. Somebody had to go after him, and it wasn't going to be the kid. He addressed the three docs. "You guys keep on the scanner room. I'll go after Jackson." What he would do to him when he caught up was another matter.

McKay stepped forward. "I'll go with you in case you, uh, need backup," he volunteered.

Unlikely as it would have seemed a few months ago, he honestly appreciated the offer. McKay would never make a marine, but he could point a gun in the right direction and keep a- well, okay, an extremely panicked yet still functional head in a crisis. Right now, however, they were stretched too thin for him to accept the offer. He pulled the scientist a short distance away from the others, and pointedly tilted his head at them.

"McKay. They're civilians," John reminded him in a low voice.

McKay gave him a variant of that look he used on people who couldn't do math in their heads. "Uh, Major, in case you've forgotten, _I'm_ a civilian," he said, completely missing the whole 'conferring in hushed tones' vibe they had going on.

John pressed his handgun into McKay's guns. "Depends what standard you're going by," he said seriously, and stepped back. "I'm going after Jackson. You, look after them."

He trusted McKay, but that didn't mean he was happy to abandon the party he was supposed to be escorting. When he caught up with Jackson, there were going to be words exchanged.

* * *

The prisoner had been making a ruckus for some time now.

"He continues to insist he is no longer a host," Teal'c reported, as O'Neill returned to join them.

O'Neill leaned against the door to the lab room they were using as a cell, hands rested on top of his weapon. "Ah, the old 'don't shoot me, I'm still your friend', line," he observed. "Whatever happened to the days of 'nothing of the host survives'? You had to give it to the old System Lords, at least they were consistent."

"Sir, it's theoretically possible he's telling the truth," Colonel Carter pointed out. O'Neill crinkled his brow in displeasure.

"I thought you said that little explosion of yours didn't pack enough punch to hurt a Goa'uld?" he accused.

"It couldn't possibly, sir," she confirmed. "At least, not in any way that would allow the host to survive unharmed. But the symbiote could have switched hosts prior to the ambush."

"Lieutenant Brand maintains that his symbiote rendered him unconscious before leaving his body," Teal'c reported. He had heard the story repeated many times, but that did not mean he was ready to believe it. A false god could be devious. "He claims that he has no memory of the explosion or entering the hallway where the trap was set."

"Which would mean that he was dumped there as a ruse to distract us," Colonel Carter said.

"Or that he's lying his ass off!" O'Neill reminded her wildly. He peered through the observation window at the pacing Lieutenant, then turned back to his old teammates. "Can't you do the old... tummy tingle test?" he enquired, waggling his fingers loosely above his stomach.

"Sir, there hasn't been nearly enough time for the naquadah in his system to dissipate." Colonel Carter shook her head regretfully. "The only way to be sure is an MRI, and we don't have the equipment to hand."

"Except for this scanner-writer of Daniel's... and we're not taking him up there." O'Neill became pensive, and let his hand float over the door release for the lab. Teal'c waited patiently for him to speak the words he was clearly reluctant to say. "I can probably tell if I get close enough," he said finally.

"Sir?" Colonel Carter's intonation hovered on the borderline between the one that meant, 'do you have an idea?' and the one that meant, 'are your mental facilities compromised?' In practise, Teal'c had found, it was seldom necessary to distinguish between the two.

O'Neill held her gaze steadily, and then Teal'c's. "I just can," he said. As their eyes met, Teal'c felt a whisper of a touch against his thoughts, like the communion he had once found seeking balance with his symbiote. Beside him, Colonel Carter staggered, clearly feeling it too.

Teal'c bowed his head respectfully to his old friend. It was clear that the powers of the Ancients continued to unfold in him at a greater rate than he had admitted to. If O'Neill believed he could discern the presence of a Goa'uld, then he could do so.

Colonel Carter appeared less sanguine, although Teal'c knew it was not O'Neill's competence she doubted. "Sir, if he _is_ a Goa'uld-"

"Then we'll shoot him," he said matter-of-factly, and opened the door to the cell.

Teal'c raised his staff weapon, prepared to do exactly that should the Lieutenant show any sign of being more than he appeared. Beside him, Colonel Carter took aim also. Lieutenant Brand stood to attention as his General approached, an unlikely response for an arrogant false god, but neither of them relaxed or lowered their weapons.

O'Neill did not reach out to touch the prisoner, but stood close enough that the boy had to look up to properly meet his eye. There was a moment of silent communication, then O'Neill stepped away. Lieutenant Brand sank with a sigh, as if he had just been released from a tight grip.

O'Neill turned to face his former teammates. "He's clean," he said grimly.

It was excellent news for Lieutenant Brand. Less so for the rest of them - for now they had no way of determining into whom the symbiote had jumped.


	23. Chapter 23

** XXIII **

"Ah, Major." Daniel gave the man a polite nod as he caught up. He'd known Sheppard would follow. "The Goa'uld's just through there."

The Major gave him an incredulous look. "That's nice. Why the hell are _you_ out here?"

He blinked. "Well, I was waiting for you." Wasn't it obvious?

"Did I or did I not say not to deviate from the path? You deviated!" he hissed. He pointed back the way they'd come with his weapon. "This is pretty damn deviant, Doctor!"

Daniel let out a small huff of breath. This was what was so frustrating about the military mindset. Always throwing a hissy fit about procedures that had _already_ been abandoned as unuseful, instead of focusing on the situation as it stood.

He raised a hand. "Listen!" A faint sound of sobbing drifted out of the lab. He lifted his eyebrows at Sheppard. "Maybe it's an escaped prisoner."

"Maybe it's a _trap_," Sheppard said, in that 'I'm going to enunciate slowly and clearly and use big facial cues just so you get it' manner that appeared to be handed out to Air Force officers as standard issue.

Their radios crackled. They pulled back down the hallway, and the Major lifted a hand to his ear to respond. "Sheppard."

Sam's voice emerged. "Major, be warned. We have at least one confirmed case of the Goa'uld switching hosts. Be especially wary of anyone you encounter who you know has the ATA gene. Stay alert."

"Yes, Ma'am." He shut the radio off.

Daniel gave him an eloquent look, and then cautiously moved off toward the lab.

It took him a moment to spot her. She was hunched up in a corner beneath one of the lab tables, so that all he could see was a relatively small pair of standard issue boots and a fold of familiar drab green. That narrowed it to the Goa'ulded SGC members, and there was only one woman on SG-6. Alexandra Sorvino.

Daniel knew all of the civilian gate team members personally - hardly a surprise, since he was a major voice in their selection. Those who made it to the SGC were already the best and brightest in their field, that was a given. It wasn't breadth of knowledge or intellectual rigour that mattered out in the wider galaxy, but flexibility, the right balance of speed to thoroughness, and the common sense to know when to argue and when to duck. He'd recommended Sorvino on the belief that she would cope when she was under fire, do her job when under pressure, take injury and traumatic circumstances in her stride.

But none of that was preparation for being a Goa'uld host. Daniel's jaw tightened as he thought of Sha're and Sarah; one five years dead, the other finally rescued and freed of her symbiote. Though the thought made him burn with guilt, he didn't always know which he considered better off. After three years as a slave to Osiris, the Sarah that he'd once known would never be the same.

For Alex, it had been a matter of weeks - but that was more than enough time to do damage. He remembered Sam's depression after she'd been host to Jolinar.

He crouched down tentatively to peer under the desk. "Alex?" There was no reaction, and the quiet sobbing wrenched at him.

"Alex?" Daniel reached out to touch her arm. Alex gasped at the contact, and her head jerked up. Her grey-green eyes were rimmed with red, and in them he saw recognition, rising panic-

-And then a flare of light.

"Doctor Jackson," said the mocking tones of the Goa'uld. "How fitting. My host has always wished you could be her knight in shining armour."

He threw himself backwards, but not fast enough to avoid the slash at his leg. It was Sorvino's combat knife - a low tech weapon for a Goa'uld, but as it bit deep into the flesh below his kneecap, he wasn't inclined to fault it. He yelled in pain as he crashed to the ground on his butt.

He rolled to the side immediately, but as he tried to rise up on his hands and his knees, his injured leg betrayed him. As he staggered and lurched to the right, he was kicked in the back of the head.

Daniel went sprawling, but instead of trying to get up, he rolled back the other way, onto his back. He had his Beretta drawn and aimed with a speed Jack O'Neill could be proud of - but the Goa'uld was faster. The zat discharge plastered his limbs to the ground, and the weapon dropped from his loose fingers.

As luck would have it, the unpredictable effects of the weapon left him conscious... but that was no use to him at all, since he couldn't move a muscle. The Goa'uld loomed over him, wearing a smirk that had no business being on Alex Sorvino's face.

"The famous Doctor Jackson, vanquished at last," it said. "My Lord Baal _will_ be pleased."

The Goa'uld raised the zat for the second, fatal blast, but the next sound Daniel heard was rapid gunfire. Sheppard's bullets slammed into Sorvino's torso, too fast and too many for the symbiote's healing powers to handle. She crumpled to the ground in front of him, and the glow in her eyes flared and died.

Daniel closed his own eyes, and allowed himself to slip into unconsciousness.

* * *

"All right there, Lieutenant?" Sam gave Brand an encouraging smile.

She knew him; he was a bright spark and an excellent engineer, though prone to garbling explanations when he was excited. She hoped he was going to bounce back from his Goa'uld possession - at least, as well as anyone ever could. Her own time with Jolinar had been traumatic enough, and Jolinar wasn't even a Goa'uld.

_Sure could have fooled me_, the General would have said, but she pushed his voice aside. Jolinar might have taken Sam over against her will, but at least her intent hadn't been evil. The Tok'ra could be... less than considerate, but they were still a world away from the malice of the Goa'uld.

"Yes, Colonel. Nobody's moving. One Goa'uld in the control room, and another in the medlab area." He interpreted her question as a check on the monitoring duty she'd assigned him rather than his own state of mind - probably deliberately. Doctor MacKenzie would doubtless disapprove, but so far as Sam was concerned, a little determined repression wasn't always a bad thing. "It's hard to pick out the others. They're moving in among the prisoners in the cells."

She was betting it was Baal in the control room. The one in medlab was probably checking out what had happened to the one that Sheppard and Teal'c had taken out. That left two more, at least one of them in an unknown host. "What about Doctor Weir's cell?" she said. Brand shook his head minutely.

"Still only reading three life signs. She was captured coming back through the Stargate with a marine Lieutenant and a Pegasus Galaxy native. So far as I know they were kept in the same holding cell."

"Good." She nodded. Teal'c and the General should be approaching the cell just about now, but thanks to McKay's neat little sensor blanking trick, she couldn't check on their progress without calling attention to it. McKay had the only handheld detector unit with him, and any instructions she fed to the city's main computer network were potentially open to interception.

The good news was, so were Baal's. The bad news was, she wasn't nearly familiar enough with the system to spot which commands were out of place. The translation software running would have been a boon in her lab back home, but here it wasn't nearly fast or complete enough to keep up with the volume of traffic. Her one consolation was that it would be of even less use to Baal - written English was as much a foreign language to him as the original text.

Of course, it was entirely possible he was fluent in Ancient. Who knew how many centuries he'd had to study it?

Daniel, probably. She could have done with him here now, to hang over her shoulder and tell her if-

Wait, what was that? She isolated a command that was flagged as an override. Oh, yeah, that little chunk of code had Baal's fingerprints all over it - but what was it doing?

Some of these subroutines looked familiar. This one here was the same security protocol she and McKay had called to seal off the hallway when they set their Goa'uld trap. Sam called up the ID of the affected hallway on the city map.

It was the one directly outside Doctor Weir's holding cell.

_Oh, crap._

She keyed the radio. "Sir?"

Only static answered. They were being jammed.

* * *

O'Neill gave him the hand signal to proceed. Teal'c ascertained that the way was clear, then entered the small room, his staff weapon raised. The prisoners jumped to their feet.

Doctor Weir he recognised from her time as head of the SGC. She appeared wearied and under stress, but otherwise unharmed. The young marine Lieutenant was familiar also, although Master Bra'tac would have had harsh words for the fact that Teal'c could not recall his name or the circumstances of their meeting. Unlike Jaffa, Tauri warriors did not serve until death but came and went for many reasons, and Teal'c no longer considered it practical to personally assess every one.

The second woman was a stranger to him, but she carried herself like a warrior. And her tactics were wise; instead of mimicking the Lieutenant's defensive position in front of their leader, she remained in the furthest corner of the cell, forcing Teal'c to split his aim. Had he made a move against Weir, she would have had opportunity to strike while the Lieutenant's attempt to intervene distracted him.

Of course, it would have come to nothing, for Teal'c could move far faster than those unfamiliar with Jaffa ever realised. But nonetheless, he approved of such tactical thinking. Especially in those that he was not actually intending to fight.

"Teal'c!" Doctor Weir raised her eyebrows in surprise.

O'Neill joined him in the doorway. "Hey, kids," he said cheerfully. "Did someone here call for a cab?"

The Lieutenant straightened to attention automatically, but instead of relaxing afterwards he grew more tense. "They could be Goa'uld," he cautioned Doctor Weir.

"We could be Goa'uld." O'Neill pulled a dissatisfied face as he exchanged looks with Teal'c. "Why did we not think of that at the planning stage?"

Indeed, having been confronted with one set of impostors, it was only natural that the expedition members would regard others originating from the SGC with suspicion.

"We are not Goa'uld," Teal'c informed them.

"See?" O'Neill spread his hands and smiled. "How can you argue with that? And hey, Teal'c's a Jaffa. He can't even _be_ made a Goa'uld."

A useful distinction but not, alas, a correct one. "In fact, O'Neill, since I no longer possess my symbiote, it is entirely possible for-"

O'Neill narrowed his eyes. "Way to give away the home team advantage, T," he accused. He turned to the freed prisoners. "Look. We're not Goa'uld. You can tell this from the fact that we're _rescuing_ you. The SGC isn't compromised. This is a rogue group captured by Baal - we didn't even know they were still alive. In fact, would you believe that we're here on an entirely unrelated matter?"

"No," Doctor Weir said simply, but the wry twist to her mouth suggested she was beginning to be persuaded. Truly, there were few things that resembled the posturing of the Goa'uld less than a typical conversation with O'Neill.

"Exactly!" He shrugged. "If we really were the bad guys, we would have come up with a story that sounded much less stupid."

"Whether they are our enemy or not, we have little choice but to go along with them," the warrior woman observed. "What is the situation in the city?" she asked them.

Teal'c took point as O'Neill ushered them out into the hallway.

"There were five Goa'uld," he briefed them briskly. "One's been neutralised, but we know that at least one of the others has changed hosts since arriving on Atlantis. The main threat is Baal. He has a much greater understanding of Ancient technology than the rest of them, and a lot of years' experience at the galactic domination thing. The bad news is he's holed up in the control room, playing with the computers," O'Neill said.

"And that gives him total control over the Stargate," Doctor Weir said soberly.

"According to McKay, he probably hasn't been able to crack the database of gate addresses yet. He was muttering about upping the security because of some folks called the..." He exchanged a glance with Teal'c. "They weren't the Jedi, were they?" he admitted.

Indeed not. Hacking the encrypted files of others was not an activity of which Master Yoda would have approved.

"The Genii. We dealt with them," Doctor Weir said confidently. "Rodney's free?" she said, sounding more hopeful.

"Of course!" the Lieutenant realised. "The doc wouldn't let him out of the infirmary to go to the briefing."

"We have McKay _and_ Carter," O'Neill informed them. "Working together - or killing each other, one or the other-"

He stopped abruptly at the sounding of a klaxon. Teal'c attempted to jam his staff weapon in the door ahead to prevent it from closing, but he was unsuccessful. The door behind them sealed itself also, trapping them inside the hallway.

"What's this?" O'Neill asked the Atlantis residents. However, they seemed similarly puzzled.

"This is new." The young Lieutenant looked up at the ceiling. A smooth, pleasant female voice began speaking in Ancient. Doctor Weir was clearly trying to concentrate on it to translate, but O'Neill's face went pale immediately.

"What's it saying?" the Lieutenant asked, as the message began to repeat for a second time. Doctor Weir frowned to herself.

"Something about... a contagion?"

"Contamination," O'Neill supplied brusquely. "_There is a contamination in this sector, please stand by while the hallways are irridiated_," he sing-songed in a mimicry of the computer's even tone.

"Okay, irradiation does not sound good," the Lieutenant observed, edging away from the walls.

"With us in here?" Doctor Weir demanded incredulously. "There has to be an override!"

"There is," O'Neill said. He slipped back into his computer voice. "_If you are inside a contaminated sector, enter your personal identification code to be released for the med team's attention. If you do not have a valid authorisation code, contact the security team immediately._" He slammed his fist uselessly against the closed door.

"Do we have these identification codes?" the warrior woman asked.

"No one has those identification codes!" Doctor Weir said. "The people who had them have all been dead for ten thousand years."

"This is a Goa'uld trick," Teal'c said. It was no coincidence the contagion warning had gone off at this time.

"Yeah. It has Baal's slimy little fingerprints all over it," O'Neill agreed darkly. He reached for his radio. "Carter? We have a situation here."

The only response was static. He exchanged a troubled look with Teal'c, and shifted to a different channel. "Daniel, respond. Sheppard, do you read me?"

There was still no response. Teal'c tried his own radio, but was unsurprised to find it similarly dead. They were cut off from their distant teammates. They could rely on no one else's help to get them out.

The Ancient warning message began to repeat for a third time.

* * *

"Sam, what the hell are you doing?" Rodney snatched up his radio. There were commands flying around the network that would catch Baal's attention in a heartbeat.

"It's not me, it's the Goa'uld," the Colonel said, and the frustration in her voice sent his heart rate into a higher risk band. "They have the General and the rescued prisoners trapped in a hallway. We've lost radio contact."

Zelenka leaned in to read the code over Rodney's shoulder. "That is the biohazard containment subroutine," he said, indicating a point on the screen. "The corridors will be scrubbed." Thoroughly. In a way not conducive to continued human survival.

"I can't get them released without an override," Carter said over the radio. "Can you use yours?"

Rodney shook his head, for Zelenka's benefit rather than the absent Carter's. "Elizabeth has a systems override code that's higher priority than mine. It won't work. We just controlled access to all the systems from root rather than assign our people individual user IDs. The decon procedure wants specific ID codes before it lets anyone out."

"Aye, that'll be to make sure they can track the contaminated individuals," Carson spoke up from where he was bandaging Doctor Jackson's leg.

"Well, it doesn't help us much now!" Rodney retorted.

"I am searching for valid emergency codes now," Zelenka told them. "Ah, I have-" He broke off and mumbled Czech swearwords, catching Doctor Jackson's attention.

"Oh, no." Rodney read the data for himself. "Colonel, we have the codes, but they have to be entered from _inside_ the affected area."

"I've already tried four different ways to get around the radio jamming," Carter said, clearly agitated. "They're cut off from all contact. All the doors around the affected area have locked down: there's no way we could pass a message through to them."

"That may not be completely true." Doctor Jackson pushed to his feet, to the mutual disapproval of Carson and Major Sheppard. He limped over to the O'Neill clone, who was taking a 'rest' that looked a whole lot more like a nap, and gently shook him awake. "Jon? We have something here Jack needs to know." He gestured at Zelenka. "Show him the codes."

Zelenka was clearly as baffled as Rodney, but obligingly swivelled the laptop for the boy clone to see. 'Jon' leaned forward and squinted to read them - and then abruptly went rigid, his eyes rolling back in his head. Jackson caught him as he fell, and Carson rushed forward to check his vital signs.

"Well, _that_ improved matters!" Rodney said incredulously.

* * *

Elizabeth had rarely felt so useless.

Even in a combat situation she could at least try to negotiate, but now there was nothing and no one to negotiate with - just that implacable Ancient voice, repeating its message over and over and beginning the countdown. She almost wished she didn't know the Ancient numbers as well as she did. At least the others were spared the knowledge of exactly how soon they would meet their demise.

She'd tried her system override code in both door panels, only to be repeatedly frustrated. Again and again she was given the same useless options: enter the ID number she didn't have, or contact the security team who didn't exist.

"Damn it!"

Knowing full well it was pointless, Elizabeth tried the code again. She would have given anything to have Rodney McKay with her right now. Or Zelenka. Simpson. Christ, even Kavanagh! Anybody who could pull this stupid panel off the wall and switch the right crystals to make it believe it ought to open.

The companions that she did have were trying to force the doors, but was obvious it wasn't going to happen. If Teal'c's astonishing muscles couldn't budge the door at one end, Ford and Teyla working together had no hope of moving the other.

It was a futile effort, but she was still surprised General O'Neill wasn't helping. It wasn't like him to be standing back. She looked for him, in time to see him stiffen abruptly and tilt his head as if he'd heard something. She thought for one delighted instant they'd re-established radio contact, but he didn't have an earpiece in, just one of the handheld units the SGC used. What had caught his attention?

All _she_ could hear was the Ancient voice, counting down implacably. _Dexis. Nova. Octa. Septem..._ She cursed, and slapped the panel as it rejected her override code once again. What use was it having the highest priority command code when it wouldn't even get you through a locked door?

O'Neill suddenly ran forward, unceremoniously shifting her out of the way by her shoulders. As he tapped furiously at the Ancient keypad, the countdown reached zero, and slots opened up in the ceiling. Chemical-scented spray rained down on them, and Elizabeth covered her mouth with her sleeve.

"General," she warned him, "it's not accepting any of the-"

There was a melodic chime and the door slid open. Teal'c, still in the process of trying to force it, executed an elegant pirouette to avoid falling through and turned to push Elizabeth towards it.

She stared at O'Neill in disbelief even as she was being ushered out. If he'd known the code, why hadn't he tried it earlier? "How did you-?"

"This stuff's corrosive." He spoke over her words. "It's going to burn if we don't get it scrubbed off immediately. T, escort the doctor up two blocks - there are showers in the living quarters on the left. I'll follow on with the other two." He ran down to the other end of the hallway to assist Ford and Teyla.

Elizabeth hadn't really taken that much of a hit from the spray, and she was sure the itching that sprung up at his words was wholly psychological, but nonetheless she jogged after Teal'c.

She couldn't help wondering, though, once she was under the welcome heat of the water, just how a man who'd arrived in the city at most forty-eight hours ago already knew where the bathrooms were.


	24. Chapter 24

** XXIV **

In the movies, when the good guys swept in to rescue the hostages, it was never this much of a headache.

Sam hadn't slept since they'd come off the _Skidbladnir_, and the one she had right now was making an impressive bid for migraine status. There were two blips holed up in the control room, and Sheppard had reported in that his team had neutralised a second Goa'uld, but that still left the one who'd started off in Brand unaccounted for. And by unaccounted for, they meant hiding out in one of the hostages.

One of the many, many hostages. Whose bright idea had it been to send so many people on the Atlantis expedition?

The prisoners were scattered around the central part of the city in lots of separate pockets. Weir's command code could override the security measures Baal had put in place, but they couldn't unlock all the cells simultaneously for fear of releasing the Goa'uld. She and Teal'c were trying to circulate among the prisoners in the hopes of sensing naquadah, which was A, not the world's most reliable detection method, and B, less than easy considering the expedition members' understandable wariness around anyone in an SGC uniform.

It didn't help that they were having to separate out and isolate the ATA gene carriers as the most likely potential hosts. None of the prisoners had been fed, some of them had been wounded attempting to escape, Security Chief Bates was refusing to accept that _any_ of the rescuers were un-Goa'ulded - a highly commendable degree of caution that was a massive pain in the ass right now - and some guy with a ponytail that she _really_ wanted to snip off with her field knife was bitching about his civil rights and her lack of organisation. And, to top it all off, nobody seemed to know where they kept the damn coffee in this place.

Frankly, she'd preferred the part where she was trying and failing to rescue her trapped teammates from certain death.

And of course, while _she_ was stuck with this personnel-juggling nightmare, General Sneaky Bastard O'Neill had managed to excuse himself on the grounds that someone had to check in with Sheppard's team.

The perks of rank, indeed.

* * *

The trouble with archaeology and linguistics in a world-saving context was that past a certain point, you usually had to find some other way to make yourself useful.

Now that they'd arrived at the Ancient scanner room and the machine was in too many pieces for the original documentation to be helpful, Daniel wasn't called upon to do much except translate when Jon was having difficulty making himself understood. That happened less and less often as the project progressed, since scientists were well accustomed to collaborating with people who communicated with grunts, curt gestures, and incomprehensible mumbling. So that left Daniel with some free time to, as Doctor Beckett put it, rest up a wee bit. Or, in practise, dwell.

He'd been an idiot.

He couldn't regret approaching Sorvino, however pissed at him Sheppard might be for it. That was the same single-minded military mentality he'd banged heads over with Jack again and again. Just because they knew _now_ that it hadn't been the host didn't negate the fact that _then_, it had been a possibility. You couldn't condemn a course of action on the basis of results that weren't known until you'd taken it.

He never had been able to get Jack to see that yelling at him for making an overture that turned out to be ill-received was as idiotic as berating a woman for taking a pregnancy test that came out negative. Mainly because analogies that involved comparing himself to a pregnant woman were not the most sensible thing to wave in front of Jack. That was just asking for trouble.

He _had_ been right to proceed as if it might have been Sorvino. He'd been an idiot in that he hadn't had a non-lethal contingency plan for if it wasn't. He couldn't blame Sheppard for killing the host along with the Goa'uld, because it was Daniel's own fault for putting him in a position where he had to. He'd been blinded by the memory of Sarah and Sha're, haunted by the ghosts of chances missed. He'd been an idiot because he'd _wanted_ it to be Sorvino.

And the cycle of guilt and frustration went round and round and round.

It was almost a relief when Jack turned up. In the way that a poke in the eye with a blunt stick tended to take your mind off your other aches and pains.

Daniel had to admit, looking at things from the outside for a change, that Jack might just, possibly, have a point when he muttered darkly about scientists. He and Sheppard were the only ones to even register that someone was coming down the hallway. Zelenka was concentrating furiously on making some sort of fiddly connection, while McKay kept loudly and obnoxiously clearing his throat as he jumped in with 'suggestions'. Jon was shuffling identical-seeming crystal circuit boards in a near trance while Beckett watched him closely for signs of another fainting spell or seizure.

All in all, a relatively peaceful scene, until Jack came storming into the middle of it. He looked pissed, but since when was that new?

"Major, what the hell part of escort duty do you regard as a licence to abandon your team and seek out and engage hostiles without so much as calling in for confirmation?"

Funny how Jack's vocabulary mysteriously expanded as soon as he was pissed about something.

Not so funny, how he always went for the military leader whenever Daniel got in trouble without him, as if Daniel were an unruly puppy who should have been kept on a tighter leash. He bared his teeth. "Jack-"

"I apologise, sir, it was an error of judgement," Sheppard said stiffly. Buying into the same ridiculous culture of abdicated responsibility, as if human beings could be reduced to cogs in a machine with no decision-making capability of their own. Daniel briefly considered the joys of knocking their heads together.

_Donk!_ Like coconuts.

"It was my call, Jack," he said patiently, equilibrium thus restored.

"Your call? Did you have calls? Did I give you calls?" Jack turned to face him, and immediately lit upon a new area to rant about. "Why did nobody inform me that Daniel was injured?"

_Because none of them know you well enough to realise that you are, in fact, General Mom?_ "It's just a scratch." He'd had worse. Jack had seen him take worse. Jack had _given_ him worse.

"I know you, Daniel. You've got your mind set on something, and it could be 'just a scratch' with arterial blood pumping up the walls."

Well, wasn't that just the event horizon calling the kettle black?

"She nicked me with a combat knife. It barely needed more than a Band-Aid." He looked to Beckett for confirmation, who visibly gulped at being dragged into Jack O'Neill's warpath.

"Well, actually, it-" Daniel glowered warningly, "-really wasn't very serious at all," he finished hastily.

"Yeah," Jack said sceptically. He laid his hand on Daniel's shoulder, the usual reassuring touch that his teammates pretended not to notice was more for his own benefit than theirs. But then, instead of giving a transient squeeze or pat, his hand lingered in place.

Daniel felt a tingle of alien warmth travel down from his shoulder and into his injured knee. There was the itchy feeling of flesh knitting that he knew from the Goa'uld healing devices, a sudden cessation of pain...

...And then Jack sagged against him. Daniel caught him in his arms before he could hit the ground. For a moment he thought that Jack had just fainted - and then he saw and felt the way his limbs were juddering.

Jack was having a seizure.

* * *

"Colonel?" As Brand approached her and Teal'c through the crowd, Sam saw that his face had grown even paler. He handed her a list on one of the city's handheld datapads. "We just scanned the last of the ATA gene carriers. The Goa'uld isn't in any of them."

Sam blanched herself. That meant-

"Then the Goa'uld could be in any of the people we have freed," Teal'c said soberly.

Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn! The logistics of testing every one of the hostages for Goa'uld before releasing them were near impossible. They'd taken a calculated risk that the expedition members without the gene were safe.

They'd calculated wrong. By now, with the Atlantis security forces deployed to retake areas of the city, there had been countless opportunities for the Goa'uld to switch hosts yet again. They'd never find it now. Unless...

'Where?' was the wrong question. What they should be asking themselves was 'why?'

"So why did the Goa'uld switch hosts in the first place?" she posed to the others. "We've been operating under the assumption that it left Lieutenant Brand for a host who had the gene. If that wasn't the motive, then why make the switch? These are young symbiotes: it takes a lot out of them to move from one body to another."

Teal'c nodded. "It would be foolish indeed for a Goa'uld to attempt to change hosts so quickly without a compelling reason."

The Jaffa version of 'what she said'.

"Just knowledge of Atlantis wouldn't be reason enough," Sam continued her train of thought. "Baal's had access to the unencrypted computer files from almost the very beginning, and the Goa'uld already _had_ a host with an understanding of Ancient technology." She shot Brand a brief look of apology. "The Goa'uld are too arrogant to believe a human expedition could have uncovered anything about the city that they couldn't find out themselves."

"Then we are looking for somebody with knowledge that is unique to them."

Sam was fairly sure she and Teal'c had reached the same conclusion simultaneously.

"Lieutenant Ford said-"

"-That he had been separated from both of his fellow prisoners when they were taken off for individual interrogations," he completed for her.

And one of those fellow prisoners had the command code that would unlock the database of gate addresses and give Baal full control of the city. Sam reached for her radio.

"Doctor Weir?" she said. "We have a situation that requires your presence."

* * *

John had long ago given up on understanding what the hell was going on.

One moment the General had been pissed as hell at either him or Jackson, most probably both; the next he'd gripped Jackson's shoulder, stared at him with enough intensity to make John wonder if SG-1's internal relationships really did live up to some of the wilder rumours, and abruptly collapsed into his arms. Not, as it turned out, in a ladylike faint, but in one of those seizures the kid had been having.

It seemed that he had the same condition, but that didn't mean it was contagious, because he and the kid were in some under-explained fashion _the same person_...

While Beckett attempted to revive the General, Jackson hovered anxiously, and the kid spurred McKay and Zelenka on to work at an even more frantic level, John had appointed himself door-guard. There was a door, he was guarding it. Right now, that was the kind of duty he could really come to appreciate.

Even so, with the General having just regained consciousness and irritably fighting off all attempts at medical assistance, John almost didn't catch the soft footfalls approaching. He tensed and raised his weapon, but then a welcome face appeared.

"Teyla!" His greeting caught the others' attention, and McKay and Zelenka popped up from behind the Ancient machine like startled prairie dogs.

"Is the, uh, fighting over?" McKay asked, looking dazed and glassy-eyed. He'd been so wrapped up in the modifications they were making to the scanning device that he had yet to take any of his customary breaks to root around for food.

"There was little need for fighting." Teyla smiled beatifically. "The rescue of the hostages was accomplished without bloodshed."

"Yeah, that's what bothers me," O'Neill said cynically, sitting up and shooing Beckett away. "The Goa'uld don't like sharing their toys. Why take so many prisoners in the first place? They can't have believed our people would just roll over and worship them. This isn't some dim bulb still living in make-believe ancient Egypt - Baal knows the Tauri better than that."

Jackson's eyebrows made caterpillars over his glasses. "You think it's, what, some kind of distraction tactic? To keep us focused on freeing the prisoners instead of ousting Baal from the control centre?"

"I _think_ that when you can smell something hinky, it's a fair bet you're going to find... hinkiness." The General frowned slightly at the way that sentence had turned out, and he and Jackson exchanged matching 'What?' looks.

There was a moment of trouble silence, spoiled when McKay coughed and Jon muttered something to himself in Ancient. Teyla cocked her head curiously.

"Is that... the language of the Ancients?" she asked, eyebrows high.

"Er, yes," Jackson began, over-earnestly. "It's, uh, actually a slightly different dialect to the one I think would have been employed by the Ancients of the Pegasus Galaxy. It's interesting, actually, that despite their capacity for faster than light travel, the writings of the Ancients still show evidence of-"

His no doubt fascinating explanation passed John by in one smooth stream of unimportant as he focused on the part that felt off.

"You mean the Ancestors," he interrupted, and Jackson stuttered to a halt.

Teyla tilted her chin towards him, looking sincerely confused. "Is that not what I just said?"

John narrowed his eyes at her. "No, that is not what you just said!"

Teyla didn't talk about Ancients. Even now that she knew that the people who'd once walked these halls were people, not gods or infallible wise men, to her they would always be the Ancestors.

Her eyes glowed.

He could have shot her before she had time to move, but instead he went for his zat.

The extra split second was crucial. Teyla could move like a cat at the best of times; now she was a chemically enhanced cat. Before John could get the zat gun up and aimed she backhanded him into a wall.

His abused head luckily escaped another blow, but the force of the hit drove the air out of his lungs. As he struggled to regain his breath, he saw Jackson dive for the dropped zat. His leg wound seemed to have magically cleared up, but he still wasn't quite fast enough. As his fingers closed around the zat, Teyla stamped, and John winced at the crunch of small bones.

O'Neill had produced a zat of his own from somewhere, but before he could get a clear shot, Teyla had hauled Jackson up to use as a living shield. When she spoke again, the voice was not hers but the harsh metallic tones of the Goa'uld.

"One zat'nikatel strike will not harm me. More than one will kill the human. You dare not fire upon me."

Listening to the smug superiority in the parasite's voice, John couldn't help but wonder how he'd ever thought _McKay_ was arrogant.

In the silence of the standoff he pushed himself up, stifling a groan. He was still armed, but the weapon was useless; even if he'd been willing to pump Teyla full of bullets, the shots would have cut right through her and gone into Jackson, and probably into the other non-combatants beyond.

The two scientists had frozen, Zelenka's eyes wide and McKay's face drained of all colour. Beckett had either taken cover behind the General or the General had stepped forward to cover him - knowing a little bit about both of them, John suspected it had been a kind of mutual do-si-do - and Jackson was, of course, playing hostage, though he seemed remarkably prosaic about it.

And, slap-bang in the middle of what was otherwise a credible attempt at a freeze-frame, Jon continued to calmly work on the machine. With every evidence of obliviousness, he pressed a crystal into place, and the whole thing started to hum.

Teyla's eyes flashed. "What technology is this?" the Goa'uld demanded, gesturing with the liberated zat. "Cease your work immediately!"

Jon lifted his head slightly, but not enough to look at her; more like a person momentarily distracted by a background buzz. Jackson, despite his ostensible position as hostage, raised his non-broken hand. "Er, he probably doesn't understand English anymore," he said, blinking, as if genuinely trying to be helpful.

Teyla raised the zat. "Then he will be replaced with someone who does," she said coldly. "Doctor McKay, shut off the machine."

In the fraction of an instant before she squeezed the trigger, several things happened.

Jackson started to pull away from her, obviously hoping to use her distraction to shove her aside and get free.

General O'Neill, apparently tuned to the same mental station, started to bring up his own zat for a counter-shot.

And Jon, still fully focused on the Ancient machine, shoved a circuit board into place and pressed several buttons.

The room filled with brilliant white light.


	25. Chapter 25

** XXV **

Okay, now Daniel was pissed.

Not just, 'a Goa'uld broke my fingers' pissed, although, okay, that wasn't bringing him floods of joy. Not just, 'I now have more muscle mass than anyone else in this room and yet? _Still_ the Goa'uld's first choice of hostage,' pissed. No, this was a special kind of stomp-your-feet-and-jump-in-a-circle-and-throw-a-tantrum-and-_aaargh!_ kind of _incensed_ that he could only ever be pushed into by one specific person.

Or in this case, two specific people.

"So let me get this straight," Daniel said, ignoring Beckett's attempts to strap up his broken fingers. "In the time allotted him for the express purpose of saving his life - and yours - before he got too sick to work, your clone has been building a Goa'uld remover." He spat the words out one by one, precisely articulated verbal bullets.

Jack clearly couldn't see what was wrong with that picture. "Well... yeah."

Well, yeah. We have to get those symbiotes out somehow, don't we, Danny-boy? Never mind that there are methods of doing it that _won't_ require committing suicide.

"Jack, we have methods of removing-"

"In _our_ galaxy," Jack corrected fiercely. "You want to take these people on a three-week hyperspace cruise and then make them wait on the favour of allies who turn up remarkably fast when _they_ need something and whenever the hell they get round to it when it's our people's asses on the line?"

"The _Skidbladnir_-"

"Is an exploration vessel, not a warship. We don't know if they're equipped to remove symbiotes. We don't know if the crew has the time or the expertise to assist us. We don't know when they're coming back!"

One thing that Daniel had learned early on was that when Jack had settled into an entrenched position - no matter how wrong-headed - there was no budging him from it by brute force. Daniel deliberately stamped down on his anger and let his earnestness show.

"Jack. The seizures are getting worse - for both of you. The condition seems to be accelerating since Jon started taxing his brain to try and access the Ancient knowledge. How long before one of you suffers fatal brain damage?"

"We free Casey. Then we work on the solution," Jack said, unmoved.

Daniel shook his head despairingly. "There won't be enough time!" He launched another silent appeal to Beckett, and this time the doctor was firmly on his side.

"The lad's condition is very volatile," Beckett confirmed, shooting a worried glance at Jon where he sat staring into space. "If you won't let me sedate him-"

"He doesn't want that," Jack interrupted, in a tone that brooked no argument.

The doctor shook his head. "If we don't take steps to limit brain activity, then we're talking hours, not days, before the frequency of the seizures becomes too much for his body to handle. His heart rate's already erratic, and he's no longer responding to the medication I've been giving him. He could have a fatal aneurism at any moment."

Daniel gave Jack his most beseeching look. "Jack... you have to tell him to adapt the machine before it's too late."

"He won't. Not until Casey's Goa'uld has been removed." And Jack clearly backed him up in his insane decision.

Daniel mentally lined up half a dozen avenues of argument, and found he was just too weary, mentally and physically, to try and pound them home in the face of certain failure. He touched his radio with his good hand.

"Sam? Come up here and beat some sense into Jack for me?" he pleaded.

The pause was rather longer than a summary rejection required. "Daniel, you know I'm not allowed to strike a superior officer," she said, with brisk professionalism and the subtlest hint of regret.

"Come and beat some sense into Jon, then," he offered. This time, the hesitation was a whole lot shorter.

"I'm on my way," she said, and signed off.

* * *

Sam didn't know who to curse most. Herself, the General, Daniel, Teal'c- No, wait, Teal'c hadn't done anything wrong. He always seemed to come out smelling of roses while the rest of them took a wormhole straight to Screwup City.

She'd made the rookie mistake of assuming the Goa'uld would take the host that seemed most advantageous by _her_ standards. Thinking like a human, she'd believed Weir's command codes to be the most valuable intel on offer. But to the Goa'uld, unlocking the city's technological wealth was a secondary goal; to build a power base in a new galaxy, what they needed most was planets full of potential worshippers. The Athosian woman's knowledge of the worlds her people traded with was a Goa'uld gold mine.

This was what she hated about being in command. The instinct to lock on to the most likely hypothesis and chase it down tripped her up in the switch between science and tactics. In the field, your priority wasn't to prove you had The Answer, but to make damn sure you'd covered your butt if it turned out that you didn't. General O'Neill would never have made such a dumb mistake.

Which wasn't to say he didn't have a creative talent for screwing things over in different ways. She could strangle McKay for letting Jon waste his one chance at a cure on freeing the Goa'uld hosts instead. Maybe it made her a callous bitch - especially in light of her own horrible experience with Jolinar - but so far as she was concerned, the damage was already done. It wouldn't kill any of them to keep their symbiotes a little longer until the General and his clone could be cured.

Damn the man. Both of him. Irresponsibly selfless bastards.

It wasn't really fair to blame McKay for not stopping him. Sam had seen herself what the General had been like under the influence of the Ancient knowledge download. He'd been piecing things together by instinct, no more able to explain what he was doing than a child could give the equations of force and velocity that they used to catch a ball. But she was mad at several people she couldn't yell at - most notably herself - and McKay was a convenient target who, as a plus point, had almost certainly done _something_ to deserve it.

Her mad wilted abruptly as she entered the hallway outside the scanning chamber, and found McKay and Sheppard hovering protectively over their Athosian teammate as Doctor Beckett checked her out.

Sam had met Teyla for all of about three minutes, and she would have been talking to the Goa'uld at the time, so she didn't feel right offering words of comfort or condolence. Instead she kept it briskly professional, addressing her words to the doctor. "Are we sure the Ancient device completely removed the symbiote?"

"Aye. Completely disintegrated, as far as I can tell," he acknowledged. "Not a single trace of foreign matter remaining. It's quite incredible."

"I am glad," Teyla said soberly, staring at the wall. She was shivering, despite the regulated room temperature in the city. "That was a most unpleasant experience. I do not believe even the Wraith can have such evil in them."

"But it's gone now. You're going to be all right- she is going to be all right?" McKay reversed his intended reassurance in mid-flow, but his obvious worry was sweet in itself.

"I will be fine," the warrior woman said decisively, pushing to her feet without waiting for word from Beckett. Sam admired her fortitude, remembering her own crushing depression in the wake of losing Jolinar. Part of that had been physiological, her system beset by chemical imbalances as it struggled to absorb the dead symbiote, but even so, being taken as a host was no easy thing to come to terms with.

Teyla wobbled at little as she stood, and Sheppard reached out to steady her with a worried, "Whoa!" McKay paled and spluttered in alarm.

"Soon," she amended, with a hint of a self-deprecating smile, and Sam's estimation of her went up another notch. Once this crisis was over - if it was ever over - they really had to sit down over whatever the local equivalent of coffee was and chat about their respective gate teams. She was willing to bet that, alien culture or no, Teyla would have some stories to tell about being The Girl.

"So you will," Beckett agreed warmly, and patted her hand. "But all the same I'd prefer that you spend the night under observation, just to make sure there are no side effects. Colonel, have our forces retaken the infirmary?" he asked Sam. "I sent Doctor Jackson off to Doctor Barumbe to get his hand scanned, but I'd prefer to have a more permanent facility available for more serious problems."

She nodded, pleased to have good news to report. "We've taken back most of the city. The two remaining Goa'uld are trapped in the control room. Unfortunately, they still have control of the Stargate, but we have all the exits covered so they can't get any further into the city."

"This is nuts." Sheppard scowled unhappily. "Even the Genii at least sent a full-scale invasion force. How the hell were they expecting to hold an entire city with five people?"

"They did not," Teyla spoke up, and they all turned to look at her. "The taking of hostages was purely a distraction. Baal's plan all along has been to acquire a host with the activation gene, then escape with a ship and the database of gate addresses."

"Well, two out of three ain't happening," Sheppard said brightly.

"Make that three out of three." McKay looked smug. "That database is triple-encrypted. It'll take him a century to crack through it."

"Baal's good," Sam warned him, but it didn't dent his self-confidence.

"Better than you, you mean?" he said, arching his eyebrows.

She narrowed her eyes. "As good as me," she allowed.

"Oh, well, then no need to worry." He waved a hand airily. She considered slapping him with it. "He doesn't stand a chance against my superior cryptography."

"Should we not be attempting to rescue the other Goa'uld hosts?" Teyla said.

Sam could sympathise with her priorities, but- "We have get Jon to reprogram the machine. If he doesn't create a cure for himself and the General soon, he's going to get too sick to keep working on it."

Beckett nodded solemnly. "I don't think he can take too many more of these seizures. I'm afraid there's nothing more I can do to help him medically."

"If the machine is converted, can it not be restored to its current function afterwards?" Teyla asked.

McKay puffed out his chest... then deflated. "Not a chance," he admitted reluctantly. "If he actually gets it to do what it's supposed to, then he'll lose the knowledge base that he's working from. Zelenka and I were watching every step of the way, and there's still no way we can replicate his work. At least three of the fixes he cobbled together are impossible by our current understanding of Ancient technology. And that's not even touching on the part with the power bar wrapper and Zelenka's pen cap - which he will probably be wanting back, by the way, being the kind of sentimental fool who brings pen and ink to a fully computerised work environment-"

"So why don't we just program it to do both?" Sheppard demanded impatiently. McKay rolled his eyes.

"It's a highly delicate piece of Ancient technology that's been jury-rigged to perform functions it was never intended for, not your grandmother's Compaq Presario. Most of the code alterations are written directly into the firmware, and there's no facility to back that up, because it was never intended to be rewritten-" He stopped abruptly, supercilious expression collapsing into a wide-eyed look of realisation. "-Except that there is, actually." He spun to look at Sam. "What do you do, on your grandmother's Compaq Presario, when you update your drivers and it screws with your system?"

She grinned, getting it, and pointed a finger at him. "Roll back to the previous drivers!"

"Yes!" He whipped back to face the others. "All pieces of Ancient computer hardware, like Earth-based computer peripherals, automatically back up the previous configuration when you update the control software. Now, what Jon did in no way constitutes a legitimate upgrade, and it won't have been backed up. _But_, if we can isolate the protocol that performs the automatic backup, we can adapt it to read the whole of the modified firmware and store it externally. Then all we need-"

"Is to create a memory buffer big enough to hold on to the data while Jon adapts the device second time around," Sam chimed in. "Do you have the right crystals?"

"In Simpson's lab. She had to back up the memory of one of the puddlejumpers when it was damaged and we needed to reboot everything."

"Puddlejumpers?" she queried.

McKay frowned and looked at Sheppard. "I said we should have called them gateships."

Sheppard shrugged lazily. "It's a puddle. They jump." He made an illustrative swooping hand movement.

"Fine." McKay swivelled back to her. "Right. Colonel...?"

"We'll go to Doctor Simpson's lab and retrieve those memory crystals," she said. "Doctor Beckett, you and Teyla go on to the infirmary. Major, go back and tell the General what we're doing. If this works, we should be able to send a team to capture Colonel Casey and remove the Goa'uld from him." It was too much to hope that they could do the same for Baal's host - and she wasn't sure it would be a kindness if they did. How many thousands of years had the poor man been a prisoner in his own body? By now, death would be a better end than any other they could give him.

Sheppard straightened up and gave her a nod, and they split off to head in three different directions. At last - they had a game plan.

* * *

Jack was glad to be moving again. Ever since the seizure he'd had from healing Daniel, his brain had started to feel... strange. Like an underwater city itself, the structure of his normal thoughts still there but with... other stuff... sloshing around it. Knowledge that had been locked away since Thor removed the download, now loose and swilling around at random.

He was pretty sure he hadn't always thought in weird poetic imagery.

He was also pretty sure that he hadn't actually _meant_ to heal Daniel. It wasn't as if it had been a fatal wound - or even a dangerous one - and he certainly hadn't consciously thought of fixing it. It was just that as he'd touched Daniel's shoulder, he'd _felt_ a wrongness within him, and corrected it as automatically as you straightened a crooked picture.

Jack deliberately focused his mind on the here and now, drawing on years of military experience. When you fought, you got pretty good at clamping down on unwanted knowledge. It wasn't good to know that the figure in your sights was a living, breathing person with hopes and dreams and family connections. It wasn't good to know all the tiny things that could go wrong that you had no control over. It wasn't good to know the exact reason why Uncle Sam had sent you to do terrible things in the ass-end of nowhere, or the full details of the prize that had been won with your teammates' lives.

Compared to the things he'd had to not know in the course of his murky career, blocking out a head full of unfolding alien knowledge was child's play.

Jack blocked it out even further as he approached the territory that two the Goa'uld still held. Their sensors had shown one blip lurking around here, and he was betting it wasn't HairBaal who'd drawn sentry duty.

"Casey," he called out, not bothering to remove his hands from his weapon though he was sure he was under observation. "You're surrounded, and you're not getting through that gate without the address database. Even if Baal gets it, you know he's not going to share it with you. So let's talk."

"What is there to talk about?" the Goa'uld voice asked coolly. "My host knows you well, General O'Neill. You do not deal with Goa'uld."

There was no point denying it. "No. We don't. But we've got bigger snakes than you to fry. You help us to take down Baal, and maybe we can work something out."

Over his dead body. Casey had to know that. Therefore the Goa'uld in him had to know that. The question was, was it arrogant enough to believe it could doublecross him _and_ Baal in one stroke? He was betting on yes.

"And what is to stop you having me executed before we have 'worked something out'?" the Goa'uld demanded.

Jack briefly considered 'honour', and then wrote it off as a lost cause. "You have your host as a hostage." The symbiote would have Casey's knowledge that they wouldn't abandon their man while there was still a chance to remove the Goa'uld from him. What it _didn't_ know was that said means of removal was not in a galaxy far far away or waiting on the return of the Asgard, but rather waiting on their forcibly grabbing the Goa'uld and escorting it down to the scanner room.

"Very true." The voice had that tone of Goa'uld-y amusement that never failed to make his skin crawl. "Then let us talk. Stand back from the doors."

Jack took the step and raised his weapon in the same motion. As the doors slid open, he swung the barrel away from the doorway.

Not so much out of good manners as to cover the second exit. The one from which, surprise surprise, the Goa'uld emerged. Firing.

Blasting, actually; the ribbon device didn't strike him full on, but it was still enough to throw him back against the wall. Jack returned fire, but the Goa'uld had darted past him long before he'd found his feet. It was headed in the direction of the east pier and the disabled hybrid ship. Rather than jump up to give chase, he grabbed his radio.

"Ford, Bates. Target is headed your way."

* * *

Maybe Sam had been wrong about McKay's level of fitness.

The labs were a fair distance from the scanning chamber, true, but he really shouldn't be wheezing quite so hard from the run. She wouldn't put it past him to fake or even psyche himself up into respiratory distress just to make a point about the pace she was setting, but given that the breathlessness had stopped him even complaining, she was betting it was genuine.

He was pale and sweating by the time they'd arrived at Simpson's lab, and his ragged breaths were punctuated by dry coughing. He seemed to have an inordinate amount of difficulty unhooking the crystals he wanted from the other scientist's setup. Her concern warred with the backseat-driver instinct to elbow him out of the way and take over. She couldn't _stand_ watching other people make a mess of things.

"Need some help there, McKay?" she said coolly, which stirred him up into defiance.

"Oh, please. Do you even know what kind of-" cough, "-crystal array we need to-" cough, "build in order to maximise the-" cough, "aargh!" He gave up on dialogue and made a sound of frustration as the crystal refused to leave its socket. Sam thrust her water canteen at him and gently but firmly shifted him out of the way.

"Drink some water, McKay."

She made quick work of disconnecting the remaining crystals.

"And those," McKay directed in a strained voice, jerking his head towards an arrangement on another bench. He coughed into her canteen, and she made a mental note not to drink from it until she'd had it sterilised.

She really hoped she wasn't going to come out of this with some kind of Pegasus Galaxy 'flu.

"You okay to make the run back to the scanner room?" Sam would rather he didn't keel over and die on her, but with Jon waiting on the external memory device before he could work on his cure they were severely strapped for time. Of course she could build it herself given long enough, but McKay was more familiar with the technology, and - she would have to admit at gunpoint - a better man for the job than Zelenka. The Czech scientist was brilliant and very thorough, but when the clock was ticking, you needed the kind of brain that would make the grand leaps without stopping to second-guess itself.

McKay waved the words away impatiently, said brain already back in the scanner room and working on the problem. "We should take the laptop, too. It's probably got her research notes on the memory system, and- uh-oh."

Sam turned to find him studying the handheld life signs detector. "What?"

He looked up, eloquent face already telling the bad news. "Baal's signal is gone from the control room - and there's an unknown blip headed for the jumper bay."

* * *

Jack's hand went to his radio as Carter's voice crackled out of it. "Sir? Baal is on the move and close to your position. He's got to be headed for the jumper bay."

Beside him, Sheppard smiled in grim triumph as they both swung round to respond to the news. "Sir, we've got marines covering all the exits. We close in behind him, and he's trapped."

Jack gave him a look. "Yes. Trapped. In the big room full of spaceships!" he said incredulously.

"They're keyed to the gene. Those puppies won't fly for him." Sheppard smirked.

"He's right, General," McKay chimed in over the radio. "We've only retrofitted one of the jumpers for control by non-gene users, and that one's down for repairs while Simpson fixes a memory bug. I have two thirds of its onboard computer in my hand right now."

"He's not going anywhere," Sheppard reiterated, as they entered the jumper bay.

...In time to see one of the craft taking off. A horribly familiar jovial voice cut into the radio chatter. "General O'Neill! How kind of you to come and see me off on my journey to new realms of godhood."

"You're wasting your time," Jack retorted, careful to keep his voice level. "These people have the Wraith breathing down their necks. They won't worship you."

"On the contrary," Baal said cheerfully. "Who better to worship than the one who will protect them from the Wraith menace? Especially when they see with their own eyes how the technology of their ancestors lights up in his presence." He chuckled lightly, and his voice took on a chiding tone. "Now, really. Did you truly think I would be unable to replicate the work of your primitive genetic scientists? Do thank your Doctor Beckett for me - his notes on retroviruses were most enlightening."

One of the very worst sounds you could hear in the field was a tiny, tiny little click. It was the sound of the pistol being cocked behind you, the landmine going down under your foot, the enemy that you'd been _sure_ was down slipping out of their restraints. It was a sound that said, in the most economical fashion possible, 'Oh boy, have you ever screwed up.'

The sound of the first chevron locking was like a louder echo of it.

"Farewell, Tauri," Baal continued as the other six snapped into place. "Enjoy the remainder of your stay in my capital city. Perhaps, if you look after it well, I shall even allow you to serve me as slaves when I return."

The kawoosh of the forming wormhole was clearly audible... and there was nothing at all Jack or Sheppard could do to prevent the ship from leaving the bay and disappearing through it.


	26. Chapter 26

** XXVI **

Teal'c silently slipped into position.

His target remained oblivious to his approach. Colonel Casey was a cautious and sensible commander, but the Goa'uld were endlessly arrogant, and would not listen to the instincts of their hosts. They did not believe they could be outwitted. They did not believe that they could be outdone. Ever, such blind confidence was their downfall.

The Goa'uld they were attempting to capture had fled to the pier where the modified tel'tak had landed. Baal had clearly made no provision for any surviving underlings to join him in his escape, but still this one believed it could do so. No doubt it was sure that mere Tauri could not have disabled the craft sufficiently to stop it.

Teal'c had learned well that 'mere Tauri' could be counted upon to do a great deal more than they were credited with.

However much their attitudes belied it.

"Give it up, Casey," O'Neill called from the front of the ship, with every evidence of exasperated boredom. "That bucket of bolts is going nowhere with half the control crystals missing."

Were he not currently keeping his location concealed, Teal'c would perhaps have pointed out that Goa'uld craft were not, in fact, held together by bolts. Nor were they indeed bucket-shaped. The members of SG-1 had long since 'twigged' that his grasp of Tauri idiom was greater than he openly let on, but O'Neill's reaction to such comments was still highly entertaining.

A missed opportunity. Teal'c contented himself with a minutely raised eyebrow instead.

"Do you take me for a fool, O'Neill?" The distorted voice of the Goa'uld created strange echoes, making it more difficult to pinpoint its location. Teal'c did not have it in his line of sight, but he was nonetheless confident that the Goa'uld was concealed close by. This would be the logical position from which to ambush O'Neill.

"Uh... was that a rhetorical question?" O'Neill responded, with no evidence of guile.

"You are the fool, _General_." The Goa'uld continued to pontificate, giving Teal'c more time to approach its place of concealment. "But then again, no doubt your feeble Tauri body is already approaching senility. You should consider yourself blessed to possess the gene of the Ancients. When I take you as my new host, you will be restored to your prime."

"Gee, thanks, but I think I'll pass," O'Neill said loudly. "I tried the whole symbiote thing - gave me gas."

"Your flippancy will be your undoing." The Goa'uld's voice revealed the fact that it was on the move, and Teal'c prepared himself to move as it passed by his position. "You think you have me trapped-"

It was time. Teal'c swung out, staff weapon at the ready - and found himself staring down the barrel of a zat'nikatel.

"-But it is I who controls the playing field now." The Goa'uld made Casey's face smile, and gestured with the zat. "Drop your weapon and move away from it."

Teal'c glowered, but obeyed the direction. His reflexes could outstrip any normal human, but not a Goa'uld. A larval symbiote was less of an advantage than one in full control of the body, and tretonin lesser still. He might succeed in making a single shot before the zat'nikatel took him down, but given that their intent was to subdue and not kill, it would be a futile manoeuvre.

The Goa'uld herded him back toward O'Neill. "I have your pet Jaffa, General," it called. "Do not make any sudden movements, or you will be forced to go to the effort of training up another. Given your advancing decrepitude and the limited intelligence of the Jaffa race, I doubt very much you will have time."

They rounded the corner and O'Neill lifted his hands off his weapon, raising them half-heartedly. "Well, this is embarrassing, isn't it?" he said to Teal'c.

Teal'c declined to comment. The Goa'uld gestured for the two of them to stand side by side against the wall.

"Your overconfidence betrays you," it said contemptuously. "To try such a pathetic attempt at ambush - you forget, I have the knowledge of my host. I _know_ you. I know how you think. I know _exactly_ what you will do in any given situation."

Major Sheppard appeared on top of the hybrid ship, lightly jumped down, and shot the Goa'uld in the back with a Wraith stunner.

"Guess it's a shame that you don't know _me_, then," he noted.

* * *

"It worked!" McKay, for all that he'd been confidently blustering every step of the way, blinked in startlement at their success. Sam exchanged a punchy smile with Doctor Zelenka. All three of them were running on fumes, at that point in the second or third day awake where you snatched your rest in micro-naps every time you closed your eyes.

"Data swapover process is complete," Zelenka reported, squinting at a block of Ancient text. "Code to run removal of Goa'uld symbiote is safely stored in external memory - cure program has been downloaded to device." He lapsed into muttered Czechoslovakian.

Sam closed her eyes in relief. Now all they had to do was get General O'Neill up here and activate the device.

And there was no time to lose on that. Jon was unfocused and swaying, and Doctor Beckett hovered on the sidelines ready to rush in and attend to him at a moment's notice. He'd had two seizures already while they were working, the second one so long and so violent that Sam was amazed he hadn't broken bones.

She doubted he could reproduce now the work he'd been doing less than half an hour ago. If McKay hadn't come up with a way to exchange blocks of memory between their jumper crystal memory bank and the device, Jon wouldn't even have been able to _start_ work on his cure until Casey had been hauled up and here and de-Goa'ulded.

His idea had saved Jon's life for sure, and possibly the General's too. Sam turned and beamed at him. "That was some pretty quick thinking, McKay," she told him generously. "Very... artistic."

McKay actually blushed.

In fact, he was getting steadily redder. Sam's mood took a sharp swing from amused into concerned as he struggled to clear his throat. He opened and closed his mouth soundlessly, and stared at her in wide-eyed panic before scrabbling at one of his pockets.

Beckett paled and dived toward him. "It's not your allergies, Rodney! Damn it!" He cast around the room helplessly. "He needs to be intubated." They had no such medical equipment on hand.

"Is it the spores?" Zelenka asked, eyes huge behind his glasses.

"Aye! I warned him that it wasn't safe to leave the infirmary before they were fully eradicated. The samples we had multiplied like wildfire when the population was reduced then allowed to grow again. If the colony's spread to his airway..."

Years of experience had trained Sam to mostly curtail the useless questions like, 'Huh?', 'Spores?' and 'Why the hell didn't anybody mention this?' "What does he need?" she asked immediately.

"The only thing that'll kill the spores is pure oxygen. We'll never get him to the infirmary in time!" Beckett pinched McKay's nose and tried to breathe for him, but Sam could barely see any evidence of his chest inflating.

Jon stumbled forward and weakly tugged at the doctor's shoulder. Beckett looked horribly torn.

"You shouldn't even try it, lad. The chances are-"

Sam wasn't sure that Jon could even hear him. He placed a hand flat in the centre of McKay's chest, and screwed his eyes shut in agonised concentration. McKay took a sudden deep, gasping breath-

-And then Jon pitched forward over him, going into a violent seizure.

* * *

They were on their way back to the scanner room when O'Neill broke into a spontaneous run. John was considerably younger than his superior, but it took all he had to keep up with the General's long strides. He had no idea why they were running, but the General's sudden urgency was palpable. John could almost hear it singing to him on the same subconscious channel as Atlantis, saying _hurry-crisis-repair-weakness-fix_.

Something had gone wrong.

Conviction became solid reality as he chased O'Neill into the hallway leading to the scanner, and heard the confusion of panicked voices. He picked up inflections more than words: Beckett, sounding like he did in a hectic surgery, but with an extra edge of panic that made John's own heard beat faster; Zelenka worried, wanting instruction; Carter, self-controlled but tense.

...And no McKay.

Because there was McKay, on the ground, choking, lips turning blue. Carter was trying to give him mouth-to-mouth, and there was no time to find any degree of amusement in that, because it was painfully obvious it wasn't working. Beckett was darting his attention between McKay and the boy Jon, in the grip of another seizure, while Zelenka hovered helplessly. It was the kind of frantic activity that was as bad as none at all, because it was born out of desperation rather than purpose.

And McKay was turning blue.

"What's wrong with him?" John blurted.

"The spores have spread beyond his lungs and they're starting to close off his airway," Beckett reported, sounding a long way from his usual collected self.

"Well, get them _out of there_!" he suggested incredulously, but the doctor was shaking his head.

"There's no way we can get him hooked up to an oxygen supply fast enough to clear the blockage before he suffocates."

"Then use your super parasite remover!" John waved a hand at the glowing Ancient pillar.

"If we restore the Goa'uld removal program and recalibrate, we will lose all the work on Jon's cure," Zelenka warned, bobbing up and down in agitation.

If the kid had looked a day over sixteen, John would have said damn him anyway. "Well, can't he-?"

He shut that thought down, because it was damn obvious the kid wasn't reprogramming _anything_. Beckett must have hit him with a muscle relaxant or something because the fitting had finally stopped, but he was slack-faced and dead to the world. John had seen better skin tone on corpses.

Not that McKay wasn't putting up stiff competition.

He'd completely forgotten the oddly silent O'Neill until he moved to kneel by McKay. Carter gave the General a quizzical look as she came up from the latest burst of rescue breathing, but he ignored her and looked to Beckett.

"Do you know what needs to be done?"

There was an odd quality to his voice, a stilted intonation that John associated with computers and aliens. Words not spoken as a natural language, but dredged up and assembled like building blocks.

Beckett had reached that end of his rope where things like 'tones appropriate for use with Generals' no longer registered. "It's not a question of knowing what needs to be done, it's having the facilities to do it! I'm not bloody Doctor McCoy, you know. If I had a handheld thingie that could cure all known ills, I'd be carrying it!"

"I don't need technology. I need knowledge," O'Neill said. Then he stood up, and grabbed Beckett's hand. Before John had the chance to ponder the weirdness of that, O'Neill had grasped his right hand too. He placed it over the back of Beckett's, and John interlaced his fingers automatically. O'Neill pointed their three stacked hands in the direction of Rodney.

Then just stood there.

"Well. This is nice..." John began slowly. And that was when it hit him.

It started as a warm, tingly glow in the region of his stomach, which was vaguely disturbing until he realised it was just more Weird Alien Crap. He felt the energy build and flow through him, channelled into their linked hands. It met answering pulses of something that was more than just contact, less than telepathy. He looked at Carter, and felt a familiarity that wasn't his; looked at Rodney, and his thoughts flowed with medical terms. He understood what was wrong, saw what needed to be fixed, and reached out with his mind just the same as he would to adjust a control on the puddlejumper.

He felt Carson's quick mind shaping and directing the flow of energy, while O'Neill's solid presence surrounded them both, shielding them from forces that would have torn them apart. Together, they sought out the alien invaders in Rodney's system, rounded them up and ruthlessly starved them of their stolen resources.

Then O'Neill released his grip on the two of them, and the link between them was lost. John felt like a newborn baby, only seconds out of the womb: cut adrift from a place of warmth and connection that had been his by right and safe and _home_, and that he would never return to.

"Is he all right?" he asked, shaking himself out of the melancholy with an effort. Beckett knelt to check on McKay with something like gratitude, his own echoing sense of grief clearly stamped across his face.

"He's fine," he reported a few moments later. "Pulse is steady and he's breathing well. He's just unconscious."

"Then let's get him-"

"Sir, you're bleeding," Carter said suddenly.

They all turned to look at O'Neill, who raised a hand to the blood pooling underneath his nose. "_Nihil-_" he began, then cut himself off with a grimace.

Zelenka scrambled up out of the frozen pose he'd been holding since before McKay's healing began. "The device must be activated now," he said. "It requires someone to be conscious inside the chamber while it is operating." And Jon was in a coma and O'Neill undoubtedly on borrowed time after the stunt he'd just pulled. He might have tapped John and Beckett's genes for assistance with his healing efforts, but he'd been the one doing the psychic heavy lifting. John helped Beckett carry the unconcious McKay out of the shielded chamber.

"Sir, will you be able to work it?" Carter asked worriedly.

A flurry of unspoken conversation passed between them, and then O'Neill gave her an 'aw, shucks' shrug. "_Nil vexare_."

Whatever emotion might or might not have been in Carter's eyes was stamped down on in a heartbeat, and she turned away from the General and spoke briskly. "We need to clear the chamber doors," she directed. "Make sure all our computer equipment is moved out. We have no way of knowing what kind of radiation this thing produces."

They set McKay down as comfortably as was feasible in the hallway while Carter and Zelenka shifted their equipment. John stood and turned just as the doors to the scanning chamber were sliding shut. Through the last sliver of a gap, he glimpsed O'Neill looking grave, and Jon lying still as the dead.

Then the two men inside were cut off from them.

"How will we know when the device has been activated?" Zelenka worried. John didn't get a chance to reply, because the force of the mental vibrations that exploded out from the chamber rattled his teeth and stuck his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

"Oh, it's activated, all right," Beckett said.

And all they could do now was wait.

* * *

"You switched it on without me?"

Rodney appeared to be very stuck on this particular point. Radek sighed, and pulled his glasses off to massage his aching forehead. "Yes, Rodney, we switched it on without you. We are very sorry. Next time we will allow you to continue choking so you may spend your final moments watching doors close as machine switches on."

He had a feeling his sentence structure was beginning to suffer from his tiredness. In fact, he was not entirely certain that all of those words had been in English. It made little difference, since McKay was self-evidently not listening.

"There was still testing to be done! The, the- what about those power fluctuations? The memory buffer hasn't been tested for tolerance to radiation. I was going to disconnect it before we- Maybe I should just see if there's time to-" He wheeled about in his pacing and headed for the doors. Carter stepped forward caught him by the shoulder; just as well, for Radek couldn't have moved if he'd been paid to.

"It's done, McKay," she said. "It holds or it doesn't. There's nothing more we can do."

Rodney scowled at her. "Oh, yes, you would say that, Miss 'I hold all my alien technology together with duct tape'. I saw your original gate interface at Stargate Command. What was keeping those connectors in place, spirit gum? You know, here in Atlantis where we practise a process called science, we like to be sure our devices won't blow up the city before we go pressing the 'on' button."

Carter just smirked at him. "Wuss."

Mercifully, they were saved from more theatrics by the approach of several people down the corridor. Radek failed to see who, since that would have required moving his neck muscles.

"Anything?" Ah, Doctor Weir. And that delicate yet unmistakeably heavy tread could only be Teal'c.

"Still waiting," Sheppard said tautly. Radek mentally drew in the exchange of eyebrow movements for himself.

"How long before we try, uh-?" That was Doctor Jackson. Radek was not familiar enough with the language of his eyebrows to supply the visuals, so he cracked open an eyelid. Said features were tilted pointedly in the direction of the doors.

"We can't risk opening the chamber before the healing cycle is complete," Beckett cautioned. "There's no telling the effect it could have on both of them."

"Not to mention the brain-melting radiation that would flood out and kill us all. What?" Rodney demanded, in answer to their reactions. "Am I the only one here who pays attention to OSHA guidelines?"

"Yes, but how long are we intending to leave them in there before we assume something's gone wrong?" Jackson pressed. "The Ancient technology we've come into contact with has invariably worked instantaneously or close to it."

"This is hodge-podge Ancient technology, Daniel," Carter pointed out. "Who knows how it will operate?"

"All the more reason to be prepared for the fact that it might not do what it was planned to," he argued. "We should make sure that Jack is all right."

"O'Neill will prevail," Teal'c rumbled, with finality.

Who was Radek to argue with such faith? He was thinking of allowing himself to slide off into sleep when the patterns of light around him changed, the only indication that the entirely silent Ancient doors were drawing open. He forced back the encroaching fog and sat up.

O'Neill appeared in the doorway. His granite face was unreadable, and Radek had no clue whether to expect good news or bad. Had the boy Jon survived? Had the machine fulfilled its function?

Would the words they heard next be in Ancient?

Then O'Neill tucked his hands in his pockets, and bounced on the balls of his feet. "Hey," he said.

"O'Neill," Teal'c said, and inclined his head, but not before Radek caught sight of a smile building.

"T." O'Neill reached up and briefly gripped his shoulder; not the deliberately rough interaction Radek had often observed among the marines, but the unhurried, almost tender gesture of a man who felt no need to prove anything.

"Sir," Carter acknowledged once O'Neill had stepped back. She made no move to approach him, but packed a world of warmth into that simple title, and even more into the dazzling grin that followed. Radek caught only a reflection of its glow, and it warmed him all the way to his toes.

"Carter." O'Neill nodded back at her, with a wry twist to his mouth. He turned and raised an eyebrow expectantly at Doctor Jackson, who was wearing a faintly puzzled look, as if he'd got distracted in the middle of choosing a facial expression.

"Jack." He scrunched his eyebrows up.

"Daniel."

"Jon?" Jackson followed up.

O'Neill gave a small jerk of his head toward the chamber behind him. The boy Jon appeared in the doorway with an awkward smile. As he stretched one long arm out to grip the edge of the doorway, the resemblance to O'Neill was startling. "Hey," he said, with identical intonation.

Doctor Jackson nodded at him. "Hi." Carter smiled, and Teal'c briefly bowed his head.

Doctor Weir, having observed all this, raised an elegantly amused eyebrow. "Ladies and gentlemen, the SGC's premier first contact team," she announced.

"We got by," O'Neill said, with a self-deprecating little shrug.

"You're both all right?" Jackson asked him. "Back to your... not-so-Ancient selves?"

"Fit as a violin," O'Neill said, and met Jackson's slight frown at the words with a look of innocent enquiry.

"Yeah. No more funky alien head trips." Jon massaged his forehead with a scowl.

"What about the device?" Colonel Carter asked. "Did the code in the buffer survive the radiation?"

Radek went to investigate. Moments after hooking up his laptop, he was able to call up long pages of code. He could recognise small parts of it, but it would take many long years to understand it well enough to replicate or adapt it. There were sections of code for which the autotranslator provided no suggestions at all. Ancient medical terminology, or advanced brands of mathematics - how could they translate the words that human language had not yet evolved a need for?

He felt a pang for the loss of the knowledge that had been in Jon's head, even through his relief that it had been safely removed. "The Goa'uld removal program has survived," he reported. Then his smile faded. "But... I have no idea how to transfer it back into the device."

Rodney had adapted the machine's automatic backup to make a full copy of its operating system, but they couldn't just dump that data back into the device in the same way. Overwriting sections of the OS while it was still up and running could cause a disastrous system failure. And when you were working with hardware capable of rewriting DNA, disasters took a more serious form than the Windows blue screen of death.

Rodney barged him out of the way. "Let me see. Obviously, you just, uh- You just need to... Hang on a minute." He tapped busily at keys, but anyone who knew him well would know that he was flummoxed.

O'Neill stepped forward. Rather than attempt to dislodge Rodney by argument or elbowing, he simply took hold of him by the shoulders and shifted him gently but firmly out of the way. He tapped a long sequence of buttons with the fluid speed of a touch-typist.

When he stood back, the data was transferring.

Rodney boggled. "Wait- what? How did you-?"

"Sir?" Carter was looking equally puzzled. O'Neill was transparently brighter than he chose to appear, but he was no programmer, and unless he had been in full telepathic contact with Jon by the end there, he had never seen the code that they were working with before.

Radek frowned up at him. "If you have lost all access to the knowledge of the Ancients-"

O'Neill's face was a detailed study in reasons why it would be a very bad idea to continue. He shifted mental gears.

"-Then I can only theorise that you must have left yourself an embedded instruction, like post-hypnotic suggestion, to allow you to complete the data transfer after the cure took effect."

"Something like that," O'Neill agreed. There was the very faintest edge of threat visible beneath his wry smile, which was only understandable. After all, it would not do to have any suspicion that a man in his position of importance might have been compromised by alien technology, would it?

Radek smiled back guilelessly.

He did not voice the suspicion that, given the two O'Neills were at quite different stages in their shared condition, administering a cure to suit both would require some complex adjustments to the controls. Adjustments that would require some degree of Ancient knowledge to perform. After all, it was entirely possible that O'Neill had made all of the adjustments, and then given the machine a final automated instruction to wipe his memory clean.

If one postulated that O'Neill was the sort of wholehearted optimist who would take it on faith that the process would work perfectly the first time.

Radek thought these things as he monitored the transfer of the Goa'uld-killing program, but mentioned none of them.

Unlike Rodney McKay, he knew very well when it was best to keep his mouth shut.


	27. Chapter 27

** XXVII **

Jack found the kid sat slouched on the corner of a low balcony, one leg dangling down to brush the surface of the water.

It hadn't been hard to work out where his clone would be. He'd noted this place himself earlier. It looked like a prime fishing spot.

Jack took up a position on the opposite corner - same pose, though not quite so loose-limbed. His knees didn't swing over a balcony quite so easily these days. On the other hand, his legs were longer. He dipped the toe of his boot into the crest of a wave, just to prove that he could. An observer wouldn't have thought the boy was even watching, but Jack knew better.

A year or two more and that height difference would be gone, if Jack's own growth spurts were any guide. Then things would be even weirder than they were already. Not that weird was news.

They both sat in silence for a while, watching the waves.

"Casey okay?" The kid broke the silence in the same moment words were forming on Jack's tongue, which shouldn't have been a surprise.

"Clean and clear." As if either of those words held half the truth. Casey was a good soldier, but Jack knew the eyes of a man who'd have nightmares the rest of his life.

If the kid looked up at the same time he did, he could see them now.

Casey had lost half his team. Jack had held onto his through fire, flood and alien invasion, even now that they went out into the big bad universe without him there to hold their hands. He would have liked to take some credit for it, but Carter was just too smart to die, Teal'c was too damn cool, and Daniel, swear to God, had to have a bungee cord sewn into the back of his jockey shorts the number of times he'd been back and forth.

He'd kept his team. The kid hadn't.

Jack had stopped believing there were things he couldn't live without, because he knew there were and he'd already lost them. There was nothing left in the world that he couldn't survive, because to let anything else take the crown of being his breaking point would be an insult.

So the kid had survived. Made some friends. Got good grades. What did any of that prove?

"So you're sure?" Jack asked.

The kid gave him a sardonic smile. "I don't know. Are we?"

There was no way his smile had ever been that obnoxious. It had to be something the kid had picked up in high school.

"They're not going to like this back home," Jack warned.

The kid shrugged loosely. "I hear there's this new General in town might have my back."

"Yeah, but he's not as good as they think he is."

"Was he ever?" He flicked his eyebrows up archly.

There was no need to answer that, so they both sat and looked out to sea. It was peaceful. Atlantis would be a nice place to retire to. Aside from the soul-sucking aliens, of course, but hey, what place didn't have its niggling little drawbacks?

Jack knew full well that he'd never get to retire. He'd known it for years. Once he'd figured on going out in a blaze of glory - or a blaze of _something_, any rate. Now he'd been scaled down to pegging out at the desk when his heart gave out twenty years from now. Or ten. Or five. Or three. Letting SG-1 go out alone every week was a bigger strain on the ticker than any number of exploding spacecraft and Goa'uld torture chambers.

Wasn't much of a future, though it was probably better than he deserved. But the kid's might be different.

Good luck to him.

Jack left his other self out on the sun-drenched balcony, and headed back into the city.

* * *

It happened in less than a second. One brutal thwack divested her of her weapons, a second knocked her from her feet, and a third delivered to her midriff ensured that she would not be rising to challenge this opponent again.

There was a collective groan of sympathy from the assembled marines. Teyla simply smiled, and accepted the hand that was extended to her. She was hauled from the ground with the same ease she herself would have raised a young child.

"An interesting technique," she allowed, bowing her head and smiling. The big Jaffa warrior inclined his in turn, and gave the faintest ghost of a smile.

She had known he was a Jaffa without needing to be told; that the brand on his forehead marked him as a First Prime in the service of Apophis, who was weak and dead; that he was _Shol'va_, godless, free.

Her mind was filled with many thoughts that were not hers these days.

The burrowing snake had been... unpleasant, to say the least. Teyla had not known what to expect when it was held out over her, although she had known enough to struggle and try to clamp her mouth shut. The slimy sensation of the creature clawing its way down her throat was as nothing to the feeling of being released from her bonds - only to find her body was not hers.

The creature had sought to silence her, at first with threats and proud words, and then with pain. She had pretended to be cowed and silent, and instead entered a state of meditation, where she found she could touch the creature's thoughts as easily as it ransacked hers. It was young and arrogant, and once it thought her vanquished did not check on her again. She had pushed back through its memories of subjugating Lieutenant Brand, through vague recollections of endless time spent in the womb, and then found herself choking and drowning in a sea of unimaginable foulness. The Goa'uld had not lived long, but it remembered a thousand lifetimes - all of them spent in terrible deeds.

It would surely have used her body to do more, if not for Major Sheppard's perceptiveness. Teyla saw him hovering on the sidelines like a mother _vrak_ watching over its chicks, and smiled fondly. He took it as invitation to approach.

"Lulling him into a false sense of security, right?" he said, as Teal'c politely withdrew.

"A technique I learned from you," she countered, straight-faced.

She was confident she could defeat Master Teal'c... eventually. For now, she was content to get in as many losing bouts as time allowed before his departure. To lose against a warrior of greater skill was a far more valuable experience than merely to defeat them by good luck.

That was a point of view she had yet to sway Sheppard towards, and suspected that she never would.

"Always leave them guessing. That's what I say." Sheppard gave a crinkled smile, and offered her his arm.

Feeling suddenly clean and carefree for the first time since the creature had invaded her mind, Teyla smiled back and linked her arm through his. As they approached the exit doors, she could see Lieutenant Ford and Doctor McKay waiting outside. They were clearly waiting for her and the Major, though caught up in their own conversation. McKay's face was turned away, the set of his shoulders petulant, and Ford was grinning.

"I think someone has a crush," she heard him say, his tone conveying the teasing even though the term was unfamiliar.

"Honestly, that's so juvenile," McKay retorted, sounding harassed.

"You asked me to pass her a note!"

"It was a correction to her calculations on ZPM subspace topography!"

Ford's grin widened. "Yeah, but I asked Doctor Zelenka, and he told me that's nerd for, 'wanna come play in my treehouse?'"

"That's- wait, you had a treehouse?" McKay was diverted. "I always wanted a treehouse. I drew up some architectural diagrams when I was six, but my father-"

"You don't use architectural plans to build a treehouse, McKay." Sheppard seamlessly slotted himself into the conversation as they approached. McKay spun around to face them, his expressive face forming a quick smile for Teyla and just as quickly bunching back into a frown as his gaze reached Sheppard.

"Oh, that's exactly like you, Major. I bet you were up there quick as a squirrel with two planks of wood and a hammer, nailing things together any way you please. What about stress and strain tests? Branch flexibility? Did you even calculate the position based on sunlight exposure vs. potential runoff from higher branches?"

The Major scrunched his eyebrows. "Who sits in a treehouse during a thunderstorm?"

"The collected water _remains_ after the storm has finished, Major," McKay said bitingly. Then reconsidered. "Well, in most treehouses. Not mine. I designed a system of angled channels to-"

"Your treehouse design had a _drainage system_?" Ford asked incredulously. Teyla joined in his spluttering amusement.

As usual, two thirds of the context of the conversation was going completely over her head - and, as usual, she did not feel the slightest bit excluded by that fact.

She felt a warm rush of affection for her three unlikely companions. The Goa'uld were a great and terrible race who knew many dark secrets... but they did not know this. Teyla did not fear or envy them - in fact, she almost pitied them. They were not gods. And if they did not understand something as simple and strong as friendship, then in truth they were nothing at all.

* * *

With the aid of Samantha Carter, they had been able to configure the city's long range sensors to give them a few hours' warning of the Asgard vessel's approach. The newly de-Goa'ulded and rather subdued Colonel Casey seemed glad to be headed home, and General O'Neill was all but standing out on the landing platform holding a thumb up, but not everyone was quite so eager to depart.

Elizabeth couldn't help but smile as she rounded a corner and finally located the last person on her list. Daniel Jackson was lying on his belly in the middle of one of the less-travelled hallways, filming the inscriptions that ran along the edges of the stairs. He and his camera had become a familiar sight of late, although this particular angle was a new one on her. She took a moment to admire the view, and suppressed the mischievous urge to plant a foot on his backside.

She gave a delicate cough. "Doctor Jackson?"

"Daniel," he corrected pleasantly, without looking up or pausing in his task.

"General O'Neill requested that I remind you that you have four and a half minutes before he - and I quote - 'comes down here to zat your ass'." She quirked an eyebrow as he pushed himself back up to his knees. "How's the hand?" she was reminded to ask at the sight of his wrapped fingers.

"It's fine," he said distractedly. In Daniel Jackson's world, broken fingers were of far less note than an interesting linguistic discovery. He gazed down the length of the hallway with some dismay, still attempting to capture it all on his handheld camera. Elizabeth made a small wave as the lens passed over her, and he smiled wryly and lowered the camera.

"I could walk this city every day of my life and still not even begin to scrape the surface of the knowledge we could gain here," he said, a deep and aching wistfulness in his voice.

"I don't think General O'Neill would let you," she reminded him, not unkindly.

When she was first putting together the team for the Atlantis expedition, Elizabeth had found the General's steadfast refusal to let her poach his primary linguist both aggravating and oddly charming. She'd quickly recognised that no amount of bargaining would ever secure her Doctor Jackson, but just dropping his name into negotiations was a good way to prod O'Neill into coming up with a lesser concession he could make. It had been quite entertaining, and even a little sweet: O'Neill fallen for the same tactic time and time again, simply because he was so whole-heartedly _sure_ that she must want to have Doctor Jackson every bit as much as he wanted to hold onto him.

Elizabeth wasn't sure she would have it in her to tease him over it now. It had only taken a few months working with John and Rodney and Carson and all the rest of her crazy, brilliant, wonderfully exasperating people to know that she would fight to the death to keep them with exactly the same passion.

Daniel showed her a wry smile. "Probably not, no," he admitted, without noticeable bitterness. He started to walk with her, but then stopped and twisted to point over his shoulder. "Oh, but, you know, I should I still have enough time to run over and-"

"Zat, Daniel," she said, in her best approximation of the General's dark tone.

"He's coached you well," Daniel noted, subsiding with a smile and a shake of his head. He weighed his camera in his hand, considering it. "I have the architectural footage I've been able to film, and Sam's downloaded a small - very small - portion of the Ancient database for us to take back with us... of course, even if I translate it all, there's no way of knowing when we'll be able to make contact again without a functional ZPM on either end."

"We're still holding out hope of finding one on one of the planets in the address database," Elizabeth assured him. "It certainly seems that the Ancients were reluctant to place all their eggs in one basket with the threat of the Wraith hanging over them. And of course we have the Goa'uld's hybrid ship now." Rodney had been all but salivating over it, and he and Colonel Carter had almost come to blows over his insistence that since she was leaving the galaxy she would hardly need to hog his team's valuable research time studying the vessel herself.

Daniel pulled an uncertain face. "Sam's pretty sure it's going to take months to restore the routines she erased, if they can do it at all. And it would be a three-week voyage either way, which, believe me, is no fun in a vessel the size of a tel'tak. I should warn you now, those things don't even have showers."

"I'll bear that in mind when I'm making the crew selection," she said dryly. They rounded the corner and found the rest of SG-1 and SG-6.

Her eyes were drawn inexorably to the two caskets that comprised the less fortunate half of Colonel Casey's team. At least the Asgard had the technology to keep the bodies in stasis so they could be returned to Earth and buried by their families. The Atlantis expedition's own lost hadn't had that luxury. In addition to the scientific and linguistic data Carter and Jackson had collected, SG-1 were taking home a set of letters of condolence that she had found excruciatingly difficult to write.

"Are we ready to go?" General O'Neill somehow managed to look every inch authoritarian while slouching against the wall with his hands in his pockets.

Even so, Daniel slowed and started to point back where he'd come from as if by Pavlovian conditioning. "Actually, I was just saying that we probably still have time for me to-"

"Aht!" O'Neill cut him off with a raised hand and a commanding noise. Elizabeth hid a smile behind her hand at what was obviously a well-practised routine.

Her gaze slid past the stoic Teal'c and smiling Colonel Carter to the slight figure lurking on the sidelines. The boy Jon had all the poise of the older O'Neill, though his body language was sending vastly different messages.

"You're sure about your decision?" she asked both O'Neills at once. Their identical eyes met for a moment, and there was a brief dance of eyebrows: the General cocked one questioningly, Jon lowered both of his in warning, and the General raised his in camp surrender. Both men swung around to face her simultaneously.

"He's sure," the older O'Neill said, nodding his head toward his younger self. Elizabeth had to admit, storing the two of them in separate galaxies would certainly cut down on the amount of brain space required for dealing with two people who were in essence the same man.

Even if she was going to have to train herself very hard to stop thinking of Jon as the boy he appeared to be and accept him as a combat specialist with more years of offworld experience than all her best people put together.

"This won't cause repercussions higher up the chain of command?" she asked the older version. She doubted Earth would be entirely thrilled to have a loose cannon extra O'Neill running about where they couldn't keep an eye on him.

"Oh, it will," he said, smiling nastily.

"Young O'Neill will make a most worthy addition to your forces," Teal'c informed her with great dignity, bowing his head. The O'Neills gave him identical looks of incredulity mixed with embarrassment.

"I'm sure he will," she said, smiling.

Carter stepped forward to catch the General's attention. "Sir? The Asgard vessel should be here in under a minute."

"We'll reestablish contact with Earth as soon as we get the hybrid ship functional or we manage to find a new ZPM," Elizabeth put in quickly. "If we can establish a means of two-way intergalactic travel, you'll be able to send us your Goa'uld hosts to have their parasites removed." It never hurt to give your allies additional motivation.

"We'll build a spa," Jon put in, smirking.

She wondered if it was too late to change her mind about accepting him.

O'Neill stepped back from her, arranging his hands on his weapon even though he was fully expecting to be picked up by friendlies. He lifted only his fingers off to deliver a miniature wave. "Don't forget to write, kids," he said.

A blaze of white light engulfed the group, and when it was gone, so were they.


	28. Epilogue

** Epilogue **

It was good to be off the Asgard ship.

Not to be misunderstood, Jack sincerely loved the little guys - for aliens who didn't bother to keep their own butts covered, they sure did plenty of covering for Earth's - but there were only so many times he could stand to play canasta with Teal'c. Plus Carter had reached the stage of eyeing every access panel they passed as if she was about to rip it off the wall and start dissecting its innards.

Also, he'd been getting... antsy.

It was weird. He'd been alone in his head for a very long time - aside from a few unpleasant incidents that were never to be mentioned again, thank you very much - but during his time on Atlantis he'd sort of gotten used to that faint echo of another him, inhabiting almost the same mental space and thinking almost the same thoughts. It was a false illusion of company, half a step above sleeping with the TV on because you couldn't face the silence, but... part of him missed it.

Parts of both of him, he suspected.

He wasn't about to waste too much time feeling sorry for his clone, who all in all had landed a pretty sweet deal for himself. It sure as hell beat high school, and probably Generalling, too. Weir was good people, and his clone had a whole new galaxy to explore, not to mention supple teenage joints to do it with. The chance to live among people who were all cleared to know his true status more than outweighed the minor issue of life-sucking aliens.

If perhaps not the issue of Baal.

Jack would have thought he'd be able to breathe easier knowing there was an entire galaxy between him and that particular snake in the grass, but it only made him more apprehensive about what the bastard was up to. A whole galaxy of worlds seeded with abandoned Ancient technology and humans who had never known false gods... Jack suppressed a shudder. No, there was no way Baal having the run of the Pegasus Galaxy could be construed as a good thing.

"Jack!"

Jack slowed his pace as Daniel emerged from a side passageway and hustled to catch up with him. "Headed up to the surface?" Daniel asked.

Jack looked down at his casual clothes and then gave Daniel the eyebrow. "No. I just thought I'd travel incognito."

Daniel, aggravating little bastard that he was, immediately divined the grain of truth that Jack hadn't even noticed he was putting into it. "Sucks going back to being the man, huh?"

"I'm always the man," Jack reminded him acerbically, without any expectation of results. For Daniel, commanding officers were something that happened to other people.

In his heart, he had to admit that Daniel had touched on an uncomfortable truth. Atlantis had been, in many ways, a deeply sucky experience - he was _so_ over the 'aliens poke holes in my brain' thing, for starters - but he'd been out there, with his team, kicking ass and getting his own kicked in more or less equal proportions. And he hadn't had to initial a single form, or attend any planning meeting that didn't include the words "and then we shoot them".

It wasn't that he missed the action. The action might have had its high points, but the lows were far too goddamn awful to make them worth it. What he _missed_ was leading from the front. Being out there with his team.

Daniel gave him a soft smile that said he understood Jack's thoughts far better than Jack was comfortable with.

"I've been looking over the data we were able to bring back from Atlantis. Obviously it barely even scratches the surface of the wealth of information about the Ancients and their culture that we could find out from a long-term archaeological study, but it all goes toward providing a wider context for the linguistic data we've been able to accumulate from the various sites here in the Milky Way galaxy, and also the-"

"Ack- it's my night _off_," Jack reminded him plaintively. Some might foolishly assume that the flow of words would have to stop _sometime_, but those people had never met Daniel Jackson.

"And then there's you and Jon," Daniel said, smoothly scrolling into his next point as if Jack had clicked them forward to the next chapter of the DVD. Jack was fairly sure Daniel had the paths of all their conversations mapped out in advance in his head, and Jack's own input had about as much impact on where they ended up as Maggie Simpson's steering wheel.

"No, actually, there's just me," he said, doing his best to throw up a roadblock nonetheless. The best strategy with Daniel was to toss out statements that _sounded_ like they followed on from what he'd just said while actually wandering past at a tangent to the conversation. If you were lucky, the little problem-solving gears in his head would start revving so hard trying to make a connection that he'd blow something out and start hopping around in frustrated circles, spluttering.

Which was not only a good escape, but kinda fun to watch.

Alas, after almost a decade together, Daniel was wise to most of the tricks in the O'Neill arsenal.

"Thor said the information from the Ancient database has been lying dormant in your brain for years," Daniel pressed on, ignoring him. "It doesn't do you any harm for that knowledge to be there, it's just that your brain didn't have the right pathways formed to retrieve and make sense of it. The Ancient healing device built those pathways. But it wasn't _that_ which caused the seizures - it was the fact that it was continually altering your brain while you were still conscious." He fixed Jack with a pointed look. "I can't believe that Jon would have programmed the DNA re-writer to deliberately _erase_ every one of those pathways when all he had to do was make sure they were stable."

Jack gave an eloquent shrug. "_I_ can't believe it's not butter - and yet..."

Daniel continued to eye him shrewdly. "How much do you really remember?"

"More than I want to, but beer will solve that." Jack shook his head and sighed. In truth, he wasn't really sure _what_ he remembered. He had a vague sense that some of it might still be in there - in much the same way he had a vague sense that he still owned the glow-in-the-dark yo-yo he'd bought in the early nineties. He might stumble across it by accident, but he was damned if he knew where to start looking.

"It's gone, Daniel," he stated, with the appearance of absolute certainty. It was never wise to leave Daniel any crack he could insert a conversational crowbar into. "Hey, you or Carter might have been able to retain all that meaning of life stuff, but you can't load an encyclopaedia on a Gameboy." He tapped his fingers against the side of his head. "Anything's still banging around in there, I haven't got the computing power to bring it up."

Daniel narrowed his eyes suspiciously, but Jack was saved by a timely arrival. He spread his arms wide in greeting. "Teal'c, you big beautiful man! That's quite a fashion statement." T was clearly headed out of the mountain, today's take on appropriate surface wear involving an eye-blistering Hawaiian shirt and a rakishly angled fedora.

Teal'c compelled him with the power of Eyebrow to mentally review what he'd just said and conclude that yes, he might well have just accidentally hit on a teammate. Several weeks on an Asgard explorer ship had left him decidedly punchy. He plastered on a look of bemused blankness to counter Daniel's over-the-glasses peer.

Teal'c inclined his head gracefully. "Colonel Casey has been introducing me to the tales of the warrior Indiana Jones." Casey had sought Teal'c out during the long voyage home to talk over his rough experience with the Goa'uld, and the two of them had bonded over a mutual love of blockbuster movies.

Jack quirked an eyebrow Daniel's way. "You didn't get round to that one yet?"

Daniel scowled. "You know how I feel about those movies."

"No." Jack feigned surprise. "Why don't you tell us again about the historical inaccuracies of _The Mummy_?"

He recognised the foolishness of giving Daniel an opening like that when Daniel opened his mouth, no doubt preparing to do just that. Time for a hasty diversion. "So, T. Got the hang of that stick trick yet?"

"I have not," Teal'c said, with all the placid dignity of a man who couldn't have less to prove if he tried. "Teyla Emmagen is a most skilled warrior. I look forward to the time when I will have opportunity to spar with her again."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "Is that what you kids are calling it nowadays?"

No doubt wisely, the others ignored him.

"At least now that we have evidence the expedition have survived, the Pentagon should be willing to devote greater resources to the search for ZPMs," Daniel said. "And Sam says they're hoping to get the _Daedalus_ ready for a test flight inside of six months."

"No you can't," Jack said, as automatic a reflex as the one that came with small children veering in the direction of the candy display. "Aht!" He forestalled the inevitable objection with a warning finger. "No test drives. Do we not remember the time with the _Prometheus_? Not to mention the... other time with the _Prometheus_? And the time we let the Tok'ra come over to play in our new Goa'uld mothership?"

"And also the occasion with the modified death glider," Teal'c rumbled in, where others would merely chime.

"Yeah." Jack grimaced. Freezing to death inside a two-man fighter headed out of the solar system was not among his top five missions ever.

Somewhat depressingly, it didn't make the bottom five, either.

"Jack, that's ridiculous." Daniel's forehead developed frowny crinkles. "All of those occasions were due to the intervention of an outside agency, not because of any inherent flaw in the technology being tested."

"Your point being?" Jack demanded.

While Daniel was pouting over that one, Carter came out of the adjoining hallway in civilian gear and swung into step with them.

Jack was beginning to suspect the presence of a conspiracy. No way did both Carter _and_ Daniel leave the mountain at a civilised hour when they had lots of lovely juicy work to get stuck into.

"Going somewhere, Carter?" he said archly.

She exchanged conspiratorial glances with Daniel. Amateurs. At least T did Jack the courtesy of keeping a straight face. Although to be fair, when didn't he?

"Daniel suggested we go out for a 'back on Earth' celebratory meal," Carter said brightly. "Why don't you join us, sir? We should be allowed back in O'Malley's now that the management's changed."

"As long as no one calls Daniel a geek, you mean," he said. Daniel put on his deliberately perplexed 'I don't think I've recovered that memory yet' expression that he'd been trying on ever since his bout of Oma-induced amnesia, but Jack was wise to that game.

And this one. Like he was supposed to believe for a minute that this was a spontaneous invitation and not a carefully orchestrated attempt to take his mind off the Ancients messing with his brain, Baal's escape, Casey's two dead team members, and items D through Z on his lengthy list of things to be depressed about?

He didn't, but then he knew he wasn't particularly meant to. Jack found himself absurdly touched by the very blatant subterfuge of it. They didn't give a damn whether he knew what they were up to, only that he had the deniability he needed to be able to accept the gesture.

He'd be embarrassed that they knew him so well, if he didn't know the three of them even better.

"Yeah, fine," he said, casual tone masking the warm feeling rising in his chest. "But make a late reservation," he added. "There's something I've gotta do first."

* * *

Jamie didn't bother to lift his attention from his physics homework at the sound of the front doorbell. He'd - mostly - got over his paranoia about Men in Black coming to silence him after the first few weeks passed without incident.

It seemed that Jon O'Neill had slipped out of the small world Mountain Springs High School as smoothly as he'd arrived. The teachers appeared to have been notified in advance not to expect him, and most of his classmates had lost their curiosity after a week or so. Jamie had gone by Jon's apartment two days after General O'Neill drove him home from the mountain, and found it already up for sale.

Jon was gone, almost certainly for good.

There were voices at the door, his mother's and one that was recognisably male but not familiar enough to catch his attention. Probably a salesman.

Then his mom came through wearing a distinctly bewildered expression. "Jamie? There's a gentleman from the Air Force here to see you..."

Jamie scrambled to his feet, paranoia blasting back at full volume. The tightness in his chest eased back a lot when he saw that it was General O'Neill - but it didn't leave entirely. The General had swapped his drab fatigues for a smart dress uniform, so many medals dripping from his chest that they were visible even though he held his hat against it.

Jamie's heart lurched. The military did this, didn't they? When someone had died? He could barely force his dry lips to produce the words.

"What's happened to Jon? Is he all right?"

"He's fine. Our people found out what was causing the seizures. He's all fixed." O'Neill was all rigid military bearing, like the stiff dress uniform came with a matching personality. His neutral tone betrayed no more information than if he'd sent the words by email.

"So where is he? Is he coming back to school?" Jamie pressed.

"He's been moved to a new location," O'Neill told him. "Somewhere they'll be able to deal with him better if anything like this happens again."

Jamie narrowed his eyes, worst fears replaced by a set of new ones. "Somewhere like a lab?" he said cynically. He'd liked the older O'Neill on first - well, okay, second - impression, but even Jon had been scarily cold and hard to figure out at times. There was no guessing what this O'Neill might have approved done with his duplicate if he believed it to be necessary.

"Somewhere he'll be a whole lot happier than high school." And Jamie thought - hoped - he caught a flash of truth in those eerily familiar dark eyes.

"I'm not gonna get to see him again, am I?" he said, resigned. He'd known it as soon as the General walked in. He'd known in weeks before that.

"Probably not," O'Neill acknowledged. He fixed Jamie with an assessing gaze for a moment, then let his eyes drop to the physics text. "But you never know. I hear the Air Force is always looking for smart kids with an interest in languages or astrophysics."

"Unusual combination," Jamie noted, thinking of the 'nonsense' words that Jon had babbled. And aliens. Couldn't forget the little grey aliens.

"Story of my life." O'Neill gave a crooked smile, the perfect match to Jon's, and then turned smartly on his heel and walked out.

* * *

John left Teyla's quarters with a somewhat lighter heart. She'd been determinedly projecting calm ever since the Goa'uld had been removed from her, but for the first time he was beginning to feel like it was genuine. She'd even kicked his ass all over the gym for two days running. Her experience with the alien parasite would leave its scars... but well, who here didn't have their own special set of alien body invasion issues? He still couldn't squish a bug without shuddering.

Talking of alien parasites, McKay seemed to be none the worse for wear since O'Neill had done... whatever the hell he'd done to purge the spores from his lungs. John was still trying not to think too much about that experience, because freaky alien healing powers? So not his style. Piloting ships with his brain was one thing, but he could do without being used as a mental scalpel to scoop things out of other people's insides.

McKay didn't seem to remember what had happened, or - and this was entirely possible - had simply dismissed it as unimportant. He'd even got past his mooning over the departure of the lovely Colonel Carter within a few short days, and he and Zelenka were now cheerfully abusing each other over their conflicting plans for resurrecting the hybrid ship.

Elizabeth seemed to have had a huge weight lifted off her shoulders by the prospect of renewed contact with Earth, and Beckett appeared, well, no more visibly twitchy than normal. As for Ford, hey - what the hell could ever put a dent in Ford's sunny disposition?

That left one last personnel issue on his mental checklist.

It was easy to figure out where to find the kid. Well, easy when you had access to the biometric sensors, anyway. Look for an isolated life sign somewhere on the edge of the water, and Bingo was his name-o.

The kid gave no overt acknowledgement of his presence on the balcony, but John knew that he'd been noted, threat-assessed, and carefully prioritised before he was so casually disregarded. There was a constant cagey tension the boy wore in all surroundings that made John simultaneously identify with him and want to smack the crap out of him.

It was possible those two impulses were more intimately connected than he really wanted to examine.

Of course, 'Jon' wasn't actually a boy. McKay had explained, with many annoying asides and words of unnecessary length, that the kid was, in essence, General O'Neill. Or at least Colonel O'Neill as he had been a year and a half ago, before being Xeroxed on the 'reduce' setting, unceremoniously dumped in high school, zapped in the brain with alien technology, taken apart and rebuilt again.

...So okay, John could relate. Except for the whole 'enforced return to puberty' thing. He shuddered, glad that everyone who remembered that period he'd spent sounding embarrassingly like Miss Piggy was an entire galaxy away.

Reason enough never to go back.

And the kid had his own reasons too. John knew enough about trying to live in someone else's shadow. How much worse would it be when that person was yourself?

He walked out to lean over the railing. For a moment, they both watched the waves.

"He'll come back," the kid said after a long stretch of silence, neither tense nor entirely relaxed. "They always do. Can't resist the lure of the shiny. Baal may have his own Ancient gene, but we got the cool toys. He'll be back."

Now was the traditional time for a suitably macho sentiment like, 'And we'll be ready for him.' But O'Neill wasn't going to be impressed by that... and there was a certain freedom in realising that he was probably the one person in the place that John didn't have to pretend to.

"Yeah, we're screwed," he agreed cheerfully. "But what else is new since Tuesday?"

That won him a freshly assessing look, and a brief flicker of a smile. O'Neill twisted around so his back was to the balustrade, and jerked a thumb out over the waters. "Anybody tried fishing out here yet?"

"I hear biology give out prizes," John told him. "First one to bring back one of the wiggly green things with eighteen legs gets Doctor Facinelli's stash of Ventrusan beer."

"Your scientists are hoarding the beer?" O'Neill seemed perturbed by this deviation from the natural order of things.

John gave a loose shrug. "It turns out that guys who get their kicks out of studying fish play a mean hand of poker." As he'd discovered to his cost the day he'd lost everything bar his shorts. McKay had mocked him mercilessly for days, but still graciously assisted in plotting a devious revenge involving the environmental control systems.

"Ah."

The silence settled comfortably for a few moments.

"You know Doctor Weir's talking about making you a special advisor," John offered.

"I get fries with that?" O'Neill said sceptically.

"You'll be cleared for off-world travel where your expertise is needed." But not for first-contact or potential combat missions. O'Neill was smart enough to twig that, and the knowledge had to bite. General O'Neill would never have stood for that kind of hand-holding - but General O'Neill wasn't trapped in a sixteen-year-old body that his combat skills had yet to grow into.

Or rather he was, because _this_ was Jack O'Neill too, just as much as the grey-haired six foot two version who'd departed for Earth three weeks ago... and this was pretty much the point where John had to quit thinking before he hit the brain-ache.

"Of course, if you should happen to remember any of that downloaded Ancient knowledge..." John dangled that possibility with great casualness. McKay had been lobbying for every method short of an actual tin opener to access the information locked inside O'Neill's head, but Elizabeth and Carson had taken turns to swat them down as too dangerous. As for O'Neill himself, he was playing it dense with a doggedness John could only admire. He'd done the 'Me Dumb Flyboy, Why You Talk So Fast?' routine in his time, but O'Neill could have taught the master class. He could drive _Elizabeth_ to the point of looking like she wanted to throttle him in the space of under five minutes. And it was impossible to catch him out; he handled every question tossed with the same flat non-reaction.

He did so now, tilting his head towards John with a languid shrug. "Believe me, it's gone." He tapped the side of his head. "More holes and unidentified goop up here than a plateful of mac and cheese."

"Well, that would explain why McKay wants to eat your brains," John noted.

"He really likes that stuff?" O'Neill said dubiously. The 'life-sucking aliens' thing hadn't fazed him, but his expression on witnessing McKay delightedly chowing down on a MRE had been a sight to behold.

John could only shrug. "He's Canadian," he offered.

There was a beat of silence. "Of course, if I should just happen to remember some stuff I learned about the Ancients when I was at the SGC..." O'Neill said carefully.

"Then I might be willing to persuade Doctor Weir to let you tag along on a mission or two." After all, considering O'Neill - Brigadier General edition - had roped John into the whole Atlantis project in the first place, it was the least he deserved.

Whichever way you chose to take that sentiment.

The kid sat up, and gave him that unnervingly _adult_ stare that made it impossible to forget he was anything but a kid. "I'm not going to mess with your command," he said seriously. "It's your show, Major. I'm just a civilian here." He held up his hands, palms outward.

"Okay." John accepted that. "But you know," he added lazily, waving a hand between the two of them, "if you're Jon, and I'm John, that whole teamwork thing's going to get confusing fast."

O'Neill held his gaze for a moment, then a slow smile spread across his young-old face. "In that case," he said, as he laced his hands behind his head, "I guess you're going to have to call me Jack."

**End**


End file.
